Motherhood Mishaps: When the Applebee Stings

“Why are people so bad to each other?”  This is a quote by Christopher McCandless, or from the movie Into the Wild at the very least.  It says a lot of society; it’s true as hell.  People can be damn nasty to each other.  My version of this quote is “Why are moms so mean to each other?”

My girlfriend and I took our toddlers to Kindermusik today, which is hectic enough.  Afterwards, every Tuesday, we have been having lunch at Applebee’s, which can prove to be equally challenging with two toddlers.  I am usually very ready to get Celie into her car seat and pray that she falls asleep on the way home by the time we are done.  She seldom is allowed down in the restaurant by herself.  Frankly, she is mostly never allowed down by herself, even though she is very capable of walking.  Today’s story is a great reminder as to why that is the way it is and has to be. 

We had our meal, I had taken Celie to be changed in the bathroom, and my friend left for the car with her daughter saying she would see us out there when we were done.  We returned to our table and I stood her down between my legs to put her coat on.  (I do the traditional knee hold on her.)  In gathering up her cup and diaper bag and my own items of wear, she slipped from my hold and ran up the isle toward the bathroom.  I, in retrospect, delayed 5 seconds longer than I should have.  It is these 5 seconds as well as the 5 to 10 words from the cook that led to me feeling like the absolute worst mother in existence for a brief amount of time.  Okay, it has officially ripped the scab off of that permanent wound of utter failure that is always living inside of every mother, even when dormant. 

I wanted one more sip of my ice water with lemon.  One more.  Is that too much to ask?  Actually, Missie, as a mother, yes it is.  Because she then slipped from my hold, ran up the isle, and hung a left at the bathrooms where I lost the sight of her head because of the divider.  I was for a brief moment unaware of which direction she took.  I was at full panic for a few seconds as I rounded the corner of the divider.  It was either to the left past the registers or to the right into the kitchen.  Stupid me hung left, telling the questioning server that I was looking for my kid with large deer in headlight border panic breakdown eyes.  I then heard a cough I recognized as my daughter’s from the place I had hoped she didn’t veer into---the kitchen. 

There are two open doorways into the kitchen at Applebee’s.  Here’s some foreshadowing: there isn’t even a door.  As I realized she had entered the kitchen I started to back step to head into the first doorway, at that moment a woman emerged from the left doorway with my child dangling from her arms, visibly distraught at this point (my kid, not the woman).

I don’t remember her exact words, as their meaning and my caring trailed off after it registered what her attitude and opinion was of.  The first words out of my mouth were “I’m sorry…”  The first words out of her mouth were “Do you realize all of the hot things that are back there and blah blah blah…” condescension.  No, please tell me what a kitchen is and what possible dangers lay in it, because we don’t have one and I have absolutely no idea.  I replied, calmly, “I’m sorry, but do you realize how quick a toddler is?”  “Yes, actually, I have two...” more blah blah, I’m a better mother than you, you 18-year-old fedora slut, attitude.  (I jest, but most times you REALLY CAN judge what people are meaning by the way they say things…the WAY you say something is very important. I knew what she was feeling, that was for sure.) 

Anyway, apparently she is either the best mother in the world or her toddlers have no posterior limbs, because doesn’t every mother of a toddler understand how they can be??  WHY ARE MOTHERS SO NASTY TO EACH OTHER!?!?  Cut me some slack.  YES, I realize I am greatly in the wrong for delaying my wrangling efforts that 5 seconds for one more sip of ice cold lemon water for my frazzled dehydrated tongue. I’m not being sarcastic, I realize that was wrong because you don’t get the privilege of random sips of refreshing drinks at will with motherhood, you just don’t, but it was only maybe 10 to 15 seconds that she was in the kitchen, and I would have had her out in like 3 to 5 had I taken the right turn and not hung a left toward the registers!!  Why didn’t any of the other servers who could stop to ask me what I needed, not stop her from heading in there, as they must have seen her round the corner?  It’s not like I sent her back to make me a steak of something? Come ON!  Apparently you are the best mother ever, Applebee’s worker, and your toddlers are made of gold, stationary gold. 

I assume a lot of it was that I may come across as looking like I am 18 to 21 years old.  I may look like I’m completely green, but don’t let the fedora, feathers and nose ring fool you.  This lady was probably 5 to 10 years my senior and she had the attitude that I know absolutely nothing about child care and apparently kitchen ware.  Not that age really matters in motherhood, I realize I am a new mother, and I realize there is a lot I don’t know, but don’t talk down to me like a lot of mothers do IN GENERAL to young in age mothers because you think I am very young.  JUDGEMENT!  Tell me again what dangers lay in the Applebee’s kitchen?  If you’re going to be that way and act like things like this don’t happen in a place that allows children, then please…PLEASE…put a door on your kitchen and don’t have TWO very LARGE access points to it right beside the entrance to the bathroom.  Let’s face it, toddlers eat.  They’re going to be patronizing your restaurant.  They’re going to be entering that bathroom.  Things like this happen and I like to think I was filled with the proper amount of motherly dread and terror as I rounded that corner and didn’t see my daughter.  PLEASE do not use your superior parenting skills and advanced age and rank in the Applebee’s kitchen to purposely make life more stressful for a fellow mom.  Why are moms so mean to each other?  Because we’re BITCHES!  Because motherhood is hard!  Because motherhood is TERRIFYING and you don’t know at any point in time that you are making the right decision.  Because you are always on edge, waiting for someone to judge your way of parenting because deep down you are WORRIED THAT YOU ARE WRONG!!  Deep down there is a place inside of you where you are worried that you are a BAD MOTHER every second of your day!  Welcome to Motherhood. 

At the end of this experience I was left feeling like a shitty ass mother.  I felt so horrible for those 5 seconds, because when it comes down to it, I KNOW BETTER.  You can’t hold on to a spirited toddler’s hand enough to control them without breaking it; it’s like like trying to walk a terrier on a leash of cooked spaghetti.  I know how fast Celie is and I know why I don’t let her down in restaurants, but I find it hard to believe that no child has ever entered that kitchen on a pass through.  Hell, I’m pretty sure my mother has walked into a kitchen trying to find the bathroom.  SHIT HAPPENS!  I also find it hard to believe that lady has had a handle on her kids every second of their existence.  I simply walked away when she started the whole “Yes, actually, I have two and...” where she was then going to go into some other words of wisdom and advice and correction.  Well, lady, if that’s true, then why be such a bitch?  I understand that you are probably stressed out and tired from work, and you may even be generally concerned about the well being of my child, which was my primary concern as I was trying to fetch her.  Hey, life is hard.  But women are not going to advance themselves any farther by being so snippy and judgmental with each other.  Thank you for representing the part of my psyche that does completely agree with you and acknowledges that this was entirely my fault as a mother, but as a mother, please…could you develop some empathy?  Haven’t you had one of those days?  When you have chased for hours and just want a sip of lemon water?  Haven’t you had a few seconds when they just slipped away from your control?  I’m well aware of the dangers of a kitchen, thank you very much.  I have worked in the food industry; I have a small version of one at home as well.  Nobody was more terrified or concerned when my daughter entered that kitchen than I was.  Thank you for making it even harder as a mother to do the right thing.  Thank you for being that mother, “That Mother” that makes my girlfriend and I loathe and detest play groups and mother functions where they gather.  Thank you for judging me to be unfit in a matter of seconds with the tone of your voice.  And congratulations, because you are, therefore, better than I am.  You are “right”. Isn’t that the hopeful end result of meanie mom logic?

From a fellow mother, would it have been too much for that empathetic smile, and a word TO MY DAUGHTER about the dangers of the kitchen and not me?? In an age appropriate way??  So as to help be the village and learn HER of the dangers?  I would have even taken a “you should know better” look from you if you had done that.  I forgot all about correcting her behavior for running away from me in the first place because I was too busy calling you a bitch on my way out the door!  I was so worked up trying to find her, then I got Dr. Toddler jumped when I found her, I was a mess the whole drive home.  “Stop yelling at me!” my girlfriend says.  I was obviously heightened and complaining loudly, it was a miracle the girls fell asleep in the back seat. 

Really, Applebee’s?  Here’s a thought, put a swinging door on your kitchen if it’s like Louis III’s dungeon back there!  But, honestly, thank you for the condescending direction, because I don’t know about you, Applebee’s cook with two toddlers, but I am a reflective human being, and I will take this experience and try to learn from it.  Maybe you should do the same.  There really is a chance that you were unaware the way you approached things could have been different, and therein lays the problem with mothers connecting.  Instead of recognizing that part that is similar inside of us all you chose to go the ol’ yes I have kids therefore I know how to wrangle yours, do you even know what a kitchen is? route.  Thank you for mirroring my motherly doubts and further perpetuating the cycle of indifference and judgment among women.  You worked me up into a tizzy.  I’m going to go vomit and cry now.

Judging You,

Missie Sue

This Week in Work: The Navel Tale and More

I shouldn’t even be blogging, but I should because I want to get into the role of writing again.  I have writer’s block.  Well, I have honestly been writing a lot, just not blog writing.  I’ve been writing poetry plenty, and musings and such.  Just blah on the blog front.  So I have Blogger’s Block. 

I have a busy week ahead of me.  I have a Drifting Sun print job for Jackson’s Bar, hopefully I will be printing those Thursday.  I have to do screens and graphics for this job yet before printing.  I have a day of piercing lined up for this Wednesday.  It will be my first near full day of piercings, I hope to get a good number lined up so it is worth it. 

I’ve begun a self apprenticeship in piercing, as I said, and I had a week of nostrils and navel.  This week I am going to do lips and labrets, and possibly some others.  I’m currently still lining up some guineas.  (I mean no disrespect to people from New Guinea, or guinea pigs or anything of the sort, I simply reply to my subjects/patients/heros as guineas.  I appreciate all of the guinea pigs that are allowing me to learn on them!)  Hopefully I can get a decent day of it scheduled out so it’s worth while lining up a sitter for so long.

I will be attempting lips and labrets.  All new to me!  Last week I did two nostril piercings and a navel.  They all went really well.  The nostril, I had done before as I blogged, on myself.  These ones were done with corkscrew jewelry studs, though, which can prove to be difficult getting to turn to follow the needle through.  I have also done my own navel, I mentioned, only completely incorrectly with a safety pin.  The navel.  THE NAVEL.  That is the tricky one.  But having all the proper supplies to do it was so much easier.

The navel piercing is very popular, mostly with teenage girls.  This is one of the things that make it actually one of the more difficult piercings to do.  They aren’t always great with their aftercare and a navel can take up to 9 to 12 months or longer to heal fully at times.  This isn’t me targeting anyone, this is what I’ve read in my books/studies.  I’ve been on my subject like a hawk about aftercare!  She’s been great!  It’s doing well. 

The navel piercing itself was a little odd.  The needle pierced through fine, I just had trouble getting the jewelry to follow the needle through, as it didn’t fit into the hollow end of the needle well because they were the same gauge.  I finished it up and it went well, but there was a moment where I was almost afraid I would have to stop and not be able to do it.  I thought I wouldn’t be able to get the jewelry through for a split second, but I was determined, apologized to my subject, and lined them up and got ‘er through!  BAM! The biggest problem was getting enough of her skin in the forceps to pierce well enough.  That’s another problem with navels.  They reject and migrate often because there isn’t always a good amount of skin to be pierced there.  No two navels are made alike and there are some that just simply can not be pierced!  You must assess the situation.  I decided she was capable, although hers was a little elongated (like a coin slot) which we joked about. 
  

I need to line up my guineas and be aware of which piercings they are interested in so I can prepare myself properly.  So hopefully everything goes well Wednesday and I am able to get my printing done while still being able to write a few things here and there.  Mondays are so crazy.  I sat down last night (on Sunday) and actually tried to plan my week out some and contacted people about this week.  It was good to start ahead, so hopefully I can keep up with that momentum.  I’m already hittin’ the coffee hard, and I’m gonna need it for this week! 

Piercing Through,

Missie Sue

I Write Amongst the Dead: Ejaculating My Word Load

Sometimes I get so solemn, so low I swear I can relate to corpses.  So low I feel the worms feeding.  Why are graveyards the best place to write in?  I stopped in at the graveyard on the way back home from an errand today.  Celie had fallen asleep while we were driving home so I swung up around to the Old Log Church for a pit stop for a few minutes.  There’s just something about that place.  I’ve been going there for a good amount of my life, either to walk around the grounds, visit dead relatives, hang out inside the building, take pictures, or to connect with nature, self, spirit.  I have always felt very peaceful in graveyards, comfortable there.

I always get in a writing mood when I am there.  I sat there today and wrote about 3 poems, just basic train of thought quick poems.  Not super quick train of thought, but very little thinking or editing.  Just what came to me. A nice little release on the dead before returning home.  It's weird, it's like I'm cumming on them, a money shot for the dearly departed.  Pardon the comparison, but I just have to get this out of me!  An "abrupt discharge" of thought.  Ahhh...that's better. A passage of necrophilia. 

It’s a good feeling to be able to experience a place like this that makes you feel so serene on the inside and reflective and inspired.  I write in graveyards.  I write amongst the dead.  Maybe I’m writing to them?  Maybe I’m writing for them?  Whatever the case, I dig it.  Yes, it's definitely October.  

Musing Through,

Missie Sue

The Apprenticeship: A Hole History

Call me crazy… (crazy)…Hey!  Well, like I was saying, call me crazy, but I am starting a self-apprenticeship.  This term doesn’t really make sense, I don’t think.  I’m not even sure it is proper, and I’m only talking about semantics.  I’m also not sure my apprenticeship itself is proper, because it isn’t a proper apprenticeship.  I remain, however, a self taught woman.  I am schooled, yes, but most of the things I deal with in my business and most of my skills or talents have been self taught.  I seem to work better that way.  The hermit learns better alone, go figure! 

What are you TALKING about, you say?  Lend me your ears, friends, or perhaps, just your lobes, for I am embarking on a journey.  I debated chronicling it, but then decided, eh, what the hell.  My blog is I, I am my blog.  I like to document my progress with everything.  I like to see progress.  I like to see where I need to improve or note things of importance.  Perhaps it is my fear of my encroaching senility?  GET TO THE POINT!  Alright!  I am taking up body piercing.  There, I said it.  Crazy, right?  Here’s the back history.

When I was a teenager, at the tender age of 14, or 15, I can’t quite remember, I was VERY into Green Day.  This has a point, trust me.  Billie Joe Armstrong had a nostril piercing.  Teen girls obsess with boys, well, I wanted to BE them.  I wanted to be pseudo neo punk with colored hair and quirkiness---AND A NOSE RING! 

I remember watching Green Day’s performance at the 94 Woodstock (aahh, we have a year…14) and basically rocking out in my room, which consisted of loud music and hyped up feelings of excitement and euphoria…which begot the idea “I’m going to pierce my nose.”  I don’t know if I used ice or anything the first time I did it??  I may have.  I just remember going to my mother’s dresser and getting into her jewelry box and choosing a red rose lapel pin.  It was a decent gauge, in retrospect.  Figured it would work for a piercing!

I sterilized it with alcohol and also lit it with a lighter I’m sure and all those crude things that you know about sterilization when you are 14 years old in the 90’s without the internet.  I then, listening to Green Day, popped that lapel pin through my right nostril!  It was ridiculous.  I think the next day to school I wore the only jewelry I had to put in it (I didn’t even have a hoop).  What I had was a simple ball earring with a cross that dangled from it.  Ridiculous.  In a nose?  I was 14, give me a break!  So I wore it.  I think some people thought it odd.  No, I’m sure some people thought it odd, but one thing holds true today that was true when I was 14.  I’m out to find myself, not please you bastards!  ;) 

So I eventually changed the jewelry and yadda yadda.  I really didn’t have a good ability to get any jewelry suitable for a nose, lack of funds and “allowance”.  My mother hated my hair dying and piercing-capades, obviously.  Anywho, that’s the history of my FIRST piercing.  Onto the point.  I ended up doing my own ears a couple of times, even my top cartilage, as well as my own navel.  The navel I did have problems with, but hell, I did it with a large safety pin.  I simply left the safety pin in at one point!  (CRAZY!!)  Hey!! :/

Like I said I pierced myself multiple times and then pierced my best good friend, Hilary!  I pierced Hilary about gazillion times up her ears and such.  So began my piercing history.  And then it laid dormant.  I did get my own tongue pierced when I was 18 and had it in for about 5 years.  I have my nose pierced today, still.  I rarely wear earrings though, but it’s mostly because I am lazy and didn’t like sleeping with them.  But that was before I knew of awesome jewelry, also.

So a couple of months ago I was hanging with my tattoo artist pal and mentioned to her how I used to pierce stuff.  It made total sense at the time, seeing as how we were hanging out post bar time.  I just said it was something I could see me getting into possibly.  Later she had someone that was interested in a piercing.  I wasn’t about to do anything crudely.  I decided to order supplies and everything proper to do piercings the right way.  It would be different then a lapel pin, but it looked slick as hell the way the hollow needles worked!  I watched some YouTube videos.  Found a good kit.  A good book.  A good professional How-To DVD.  I’m doing this!

It seems crazy to delve into something like this out of the blue, but there are roots to this in my early adolescence.  I’m mentally regressing, it makes perfect sense!  I’m exploring who I thought I was or was meant to be back then…and dividing that by who I am now, maybe?  Split the diff=piercings.  (I’ve said before, math is not my forte, if I have one at all!)  14 year old Missie would be proud, but “I was so much older then; I’m younger than that now…” as Mr. Dylan would say.  Let the hole thing begin! 

Me to You,

Missie (Crazy!) Sue

Towers of Terror: Falling Bodies Over Coconut Cream

Remembering is important, especially for traumatic events.  While we strive to get over the event we also want to honor it by remembering it for all time.  9/11 was a very traumatic event in American history so it only makes sense that Americans should want to “remember” it.  Why must we remember 9/11 through the eyes of Fox news?  I was trying to enjoy some pie and coffee tonight at the truck stop and I was inundated with TV footage from the past.  I understand the REMEMBER mindset of Americans, but bodies dropping from buildings while I’m working on some coconut cream is really unnecessary! 

Where were you that fateful day?  I’m sure you have heard that.  I was sitting in an Integrative Art class taught by multiple professors in the theater at college. My one teacher kept coming in and out because he was watching it on the television screen that was in the hallway.  I think they may have even let us go early and I remember some of us gathering in the hall way in front of the tv and looking up in a mix of horror and disbelief.  I returned to my off campus house and informed my boyfriend and his cousin who was spending the week with us that we were being attacked!  They had seen and we continued watching about it together all day in between my classes. 

9/11 is a hell of a tale.  There are still even some discrepancies about it to this day, depending on who you are.  It can be a touchy subject.  A lot of people lost their lives, their loved ones, their security.  Tonight when I caught footage of the “REMEMBER” propaganda on TV (I basically otherwise try to steer clear of the news), I wondered what those people felt about “reliving” this event now.  I jokingly told my friend that people with Alzheimer’s could possibly think it was happening for the first time.  Ignorant citizens would be living it all over again!  Mass panic could ensue, War of the Worlds style!  Okay, probably not, but it was a muse. 

It may just be something to blog about, but it also brought tears to my eyes having to sit through that again.  I watched a body plummet to the earth from a massive building, like a rag doll, limbs flapping almost ridiculously, over coffee and a slice of coconut cream pie.  Media.  I can’t believe it.  And it was Fox news of all sources.  I wondered why it seemed that they were focusing so much on the terrifying side of the event.  Not that there is really a pleasant side to this, but there were a lot of positive ceremonies for the victims and their families, there was a decent humanist patriotic movement that ensued.  There were certainly more positive things to focus on!

11 years later and that’s all it was to Fox news.  It’s still bodies falling from buildings.  Why?  Why do they have to show the falling bodies?  Not even just a little clip, but a haunting long drop where the body really has some time to be played around with by the air.  Who was that?  Specifically?  Do they know?  That’s a person, God dammit!  Act like it, FOX NEWS!  Let’s remember how 9/11 made us remember how we can come together for each other in times of need, for help or support.  Remember the victims with a photo or something, but not a poor person free falling to their death because they are so terrified by what was happening that was the only logical option in their mind.  THAT is terrorism.   

It has been 11 years and we still can’t get those images out of our heads, and I doubt that we ever will. Lucky for us, we don't have to try to forget; Fox News will always be willing to remind us of that moment, that plummet, that free fall drop that changed our American lives forever.

What's Been Happening?

What’s happening? What’s happening?  A lot has been and nothing, all the same.  My husband is home because he had an accident recently at work; one of the scariest days of my life, last Wednesday.  Celie’s 2^nd birthday is approaching insanely fast.  I can’t get my house together; story of my life.  I need to focus more on Drifting Sun and Musing Through.  I haven’t painted in months.  I haven’t played the guitar in weeks.  There is definitely dust on my guitar, you fuck (The Murmurs - You Suck), but it’s all my fault.  I had a family reunion in July.  That month came and went.  The 4thof July, our 5th wedding anniversary, the Biannual Wilson Family Reunion, and then at the end of it my husband almost dies.  It was a HELL of a month, to say the least, with an excellent ending, actually.  I am happy to have him home.  I’m going to try to document some things quickly in the blog.  I guess I use it as a sort of timeline of my experiences also…although, not properly because I still have to blog yet about Stevie Nicks who I saw perform June 29.  Geez.  Get WITH it, Missie Sue!  I think I’m doing well considering I spent a good part of July thinking that I was losing my mind.  Depressed and so explosively low, and having head pain and taking ibuprofen daily.  Discovered I had a blockage in the sinus.  Neti potted with peroxide, there’s a blog right there!  Cleared it up and I was hungry and thirsty for the first time in 3 weeks.  Yes.  Busy month.  Blogs to come.  I’ll try to tag this with tons of them.  I’ll just post them when they occurred?  Sure, why the hell not.  This is my blog. 

The Boss, While Only Here,

Missie Sue

What Happened to July?

So I fucked over July like the rest of my life so far, letting it slip through my fingers, screaming the entire time while still looking the other way?  What’s wrong with me?  I just put too much on my plate; I’m like the guy at the buffet line with the salad and beans in his mashed potatoes, tiny spoons of multiple food dishes because he wants a taste of everything.  I need to get with it.  Or just start eating something? 

A lot has been going on and I NaBloPoMoed for half the month like a boss that embezzles money from their employees pensions, but I digress.

I need to take myself seriously, is what it is.  I could also use a comma and some change to that sentence.  I need to take myself, seriously, it is what it is.  There.  I just spit out the quickest forms of creations when I do anything anymore.  I wing it should be tattooed on my forehead.  It’s my motto as a mother, that is for certain!  I need practice with my writing, that is one of the points of my blog anyway, so I need to take this more seriously and use it for what it’s worth.  I need to blog it the hell up!  I have many things that I could blog about, but I’m sure I’ll just use my “wing it” attitude. I wing it with a lazy, self-sabotaging perfectionist's mind, that is.

I need to take more hobbies more seriously.  I read, I write, I paint, I draw, I graphic/web design, I photograph, I play guitar, I print, I scrapbook, I sew, I crochet, I dabble in candle and lotion making, etc.  I need to start tasting these dishes if I’m ever going to fill myself.  I need to find who I am, to let go and let it be without judgment.  Judgement.  I am the only thing holding me back from anything.  I am my worst critic; I’m such a bitch.