Good Times

I'm playing in a tennis tournament tomorrow, perhaps. It's been raining steadily for the past couple days, and will likely continue through my 9 am match. Which means it will be rescheduled and I will sit on the couch eating the kids' leftover chocolate chip pancakes and reading the comics. Which, hello? Saturday? I love you. Even you, boring afternoon hours, where the kids fight and I'm sick of all the CDs in our 300-disc changer. I even have a little crush on you.

Today I got a rejection e-mail. Nothing unusual there, except for it coming 9 DAYS AFTER MY SUBMISSION. So I guess they didn't like my name and address? Hmmm, Mignon. Sounds like a bitch. And what the hell? She lives on a street?? Fucking loser! REJECTED! That's how I imagine it goes at literary magazine these days. A bunch of former homecoming queen runner-ups at a lunch table picking through the literary offerings of the Latin Club. It makes me feel better, anyway. Because I know what the homecoming queen runner-ups thought of me. They thought I was a foreign exchange student, that's what. And no, in Kelso, Washington, that doesn't get you any play. It gets you the opposite of play. Friday nights playing Yahtzee with your 8-year-old brother. That's the opposite of play. Oh, and you lose, too. And you never get any Yahtzees or the fucking large straight, which is the biggest pain-in-the-ass category. Which is why tonight, in remembrance, we played a little Yahtzee. And I still didn't get Yahtzee or the Fucking Large Straight, but I still kicked Madeleine's ass. Ha ha! Take that crappy Texas State MFA Literary Magazine! Texas. Snort. Whatever. Huh.

Here's the fruits of our spring labor (all safe-for-work, in case that sounded overly intriguing):

The good ole concoction

Have you been celebrating? I have. I love Passive Aggressive Day! Wading through our overflowing laundry basket to only wash my clothes, putting dirty wine glasses back in the cupboard, covering up the dried remnants of doggie diarrhea (contracted from eating bones which someone gave him even though someone totally knew that bones make the dog shit like a squirt gun) with someone's comfy sweatshirt. But wait, there's more. Why celebrate with just one member of the family? Madeleine's fancy dress (which has its own spot in the only closet in our house) stuffed under her bed with all those other dress-up crappy clothes I find everywhere, Quinn's 4 bags of art projects (read: cut up sections of coupon circulars, dried glue sticks and lots and lots of really really bad kid art) hidden in the closet behind the vacuum, and a huge handful of molted bird feathers collected from all corners of the kitchen dumped ceremoniously back into the cage, on top of the birds.

What are the other options?
-Nagging? Lovely.
-Empty threats? Been there. The fancy dress should've been cut into pieces/given to Goodwill/used to clean up dog diarrhea/thrown in the trash four or five times by now.
-Asking politely? Only on crappy cartoons where the kids always learn their lesson and apologize to their friends for being disrespectful (coughcoughCLIFFORDcoughcough - suckiest cartoon ever and I hate Jetta and her asshole dog Mack - they should not be forgiven and neither should have any friends - especially not by TBone who always gets screwed somehow).
-Reward system? The reason there are enough art supplies to fill four enormous canvas library book bags in the first place.

Nope. Passive Aggressive is the most consistent and satisfying system in relationships and parenting. Next up, Guilt Trips! Wheeee!

And some other stuff:

Here's how Madeleine looks while playing Marble Quest:


Here's how Madeleine looks when I ask her to smile while playing Marble Quest, proving that video games kill brain cells (and possibly cause facial tics and/or loss of teeth):



And yeah, this is what Jim was doing all day while I was throwing his clothes on top of dog crap:


And also this:

From the beginning of time I have called underwear Panties and diapers Didey-pants. Is it such a bad thing for a little boy to tell grown-ups that he's a big boy and he wears Panties? Good. I didn't think so.