Big Fat Freakazoid

This evening my daughter and I were playing a game. Given that we’re freaks, we play Zombie. Tonight’s edition of Zombie played out with my daughter announcing, “I’m a zombie!”


“AAAAH!!!” I fake scream. “A zombie! Don’t eat me zombie, don’t eat me!” I lie on the couch, and she’s crouched on my back, making little smacking noises as she burrows her face into me.

“No, no, zombie, don’t eat me!” I scream again. She looks at me and says, “That’s what zombies do.” She nuzzles my arm with her face, her little mouth smack, smack, smacking away.

This is my reward for the many times my friends and I have let my children watch us play Oblivion. It’s an awesome game, but sometimes you have to fight monsters – zombies included. It’s also the reward for a Bad Mommy moment of mine – letting the kids watch the Thriller video.

All I remembered was the cool part of zombies dancing. I had kind of forgotten about the whole Michael turning into a werewolf, zombies climbing out of the ground, and zombies breaking into the house parts. It also gave me fun and interesting questions to answer for a week or two. Like, “What are the zombies doing, Mommy?” “They’re pretending to eat her.” “Why?” “That’s what zombies do.” “Are zombies real?” “No.”

I’m not even going into the whole slave-labor-zombies created by Voodoo using poisons or plants like tetrodotoxin or datura. They can discover that yakkity-smackity on their own.

But, you know, the Zombie game is fun.

Also, I like to think I'm developing new and interesting complexes for my children during my social experiment titled "Child Rearing". Heh.

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A couple of days ago, I took the kids to gymnastics and ran into a classmate I hadn’t seen since high school. Being that we were held captive in a gym for an hour, we caught up a bit.

She must have been on a fitness kick, and kept asking me about exercising with her. Then an acquaintance of hers arrived, who happened to be a Zumba instructor. They began talking about Zumba classes and trying to convince me to take them. They are a godsend. They make you move in ways you’ve never moved before. Your husband will be amazed, yada yada.

I would hem and haw, demur about tight budgets, or lack of child care. They’d throw back arguments about there being child care at the classes, and my class mate said, “The classes are only $5. You can spend $5 on yourself, can’t you?”

I finally told them I’d consider it. Which I did, for two seconds.

My answer is no. No. I don't wanna.

I hate to exercise. In the summer, I take evening walks and the occasional swim or hike. That’s it. I don’t do treadmills. I only run if chased by bears. I might do a few push-ups or crunches sometimes if I feel the old arms and tummy are getting a little jiggly.

I’m pretty much happy the way I am.
And honestly? I already amaze my husband in bed. Don’t need any help there, thank ya.

And if I wanted to spend $5 on myself? I’d buy a pint of Häagen-Dazs®.

My Life List

So... here's some of the things I want to do in my life. They are in random order, and I may add to it at some point. For now, it just has 15 items.

My Life List:

1. Become fluent in Spanish.
2. Learn to play guitar.
3. Visit a family member who lives in California.
4. Go to New Orleans.
5. Take a mechanics class/learn about engines.
6. Take a self-defense class.
7. Learn to swing dance.
8. Master bellydancing.
9. Learn other formal dances.
10. Publish something -- book, short story, or poem.
11. Get a tattoo.
12. Learn massage therapy.
13. Conquer my anxiety and its symptoms.
14. Become competent at sewing.
15. Do something of an activist nature -- participate in a protest or rally.

Going nowhere

This will be a quite random post, I must warn you.

Hubby and I were talking yesterday about different ways we felt we've failed as parents. His failings, he felt, were on an intellectual level. He'd wanted to spend time teaching the kids, and felt that had he been able to spend more time doing so, our 6 year old daughter would be reading and doing math at a third grade level, and our 4 year old son would be about the level of kindergarten.

I felt bad because I'd had good intentions of getting the kids involved in causes and the community. I had envisioned afternoons spent hanging out at old folks homes, creating surrogate great-grandparents. Volunteering at homeless shelters. Getting involved in groups for civil rights, and other assorted causes. I've not even begun, and I wonder if I ever will.

Part of me thinks we should cut ourselves some slack. But on the other hand, wouldn't immersing the children in these things be good learning experiences and perhaps cause them to be better people when they are adults? Where is that line between providing good educational/learning experiences for children, and exhausting ourselves?

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My son has gotten into a bad habit of getting into the refrigerator lately, and leaving the door hanging wide open. It's driving me crazy. I recently had a bout of food poisoning, and I'm terrified of food spoiling and us all getting sick, simply because he's lazy.

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I've been reading a New Age-y type book involving some meditation/visualization. It sort of works. I feel like I'm doing something and having some progress, but then I fall asleep in the middle of it. I wake up in the morning remembering vague things and not being quite sure if I actually accomplished anything.