Faster than an unmoving bullet
2006-01-26, 3:39 p.m.

Seems like a lot of folks these days, including myself, are having bouts of being bored, scared, unfulfilled, worried, or just in a rut. Welcome to January. It took me a lifetime of rut-digging to realize something:

The only way to solve it is to do something completely different, so wild and crazy that you hardly recognize yourself. You might look for a better abode, a better job, or indulge in a weekend that you (thankfully) won�t remember afterwards, and of which no one has photographic evidence. In my life, �completely different� means being so risque (hope you�re sitting down for this) as to drink milk straight from the bottle in the fridge or go buy brightly-colored underwear. Yep, sporting some *gasp* red-and-blue Supergirl ones with metallic trim these days. Cause I�m daring like that. Go me.

OK, so there were only a couple of swallows of milk left in the jug when I drank out of it. I�m not that daring. I�m a mom. I can go wild when my kids are grown.

In truth, I don�t need much to make waves. All I have to do is send my son to school. Earlier this week he didn�t finish a social studies quiz by the end of class, got his panties in a wad, balled up the paper, and threw it at his teacher. Teacher, ever-so-smooth, told Son to pick it up, straighten it out, and hand it in properly. Son tried, but the paper ripped in 5 or 6 places, driving him into a perfectionistic frenzy. By the time Son got to his next class he was in rare form, answering BLAH BLAH BLAH to all questions and being a little terd, until that teacher had her fill and banished him to time out in his behavior management class.

Oh yeah, he and I had a powwow when he got home. He knows that if he pulls those little stunts again, I will drive to the school and tan his behind in front of God and country. He is also banned from watching �The Simpsons� until the end of time, because in real life, emulating Bart as your hero just isn�t funny after awhile.

He also got an impromptu detention hall, rare in this day and age. There�s something about scheduling detention hall a week or two ahead of time that makes the whole �detention hall� thing lose it�s luster. Back in the day, you sat your imprisoned butt after school that same day, making your parents take off work to pick you up from school, adding lighter fluid to the whole �you-are-SO-dead� flash point about which detention hall is supposed to be. Son�s behavior management teacher, instead of going the PC schedule-the-milquetoast-punishment route, simply called and said she was giving him detention hall that day and if I couldn�t pick him up, she would be glad to drive him home. He was HORRIFIED. I should have let her, just for the shock value. He has now had two whole incident-free school days which I think is a personal record.

Children. Saving parents from sanity, one day at a time.

Daughter has been home all week with a �flu-like virus�. Poor baby got a steroid cream for the quarter-sized itchy red dollop on her belly, the one she had for days but didn�t tell me about (nominate me for pathetic mother of the year), the one the doctor said is an allergy to the nickel in the snaps and buttons of her pants. We�re going to try covering the metal bits with tape or some nail polish because the only alternative is to send her to school naked. She wasn�t too keen on that. She�s also been feeling too bad to be bored, but the seismic waves are beginning to rumble. By tomorrow she should be at that fun too-sick-to-go-to-school-but-CLIMBING-THE-FRICKING-WALLS-BECAUSE-THERE�S-NOTHING-TO-DO-AND-I�M-STUCK-HOME-AND-CAN�T-HAVE-ANYBODY-OVER phase. It doesn�t help that tomorrow is 6th Grade Movie Night at school and she will be missing out on precious see-and-be-seen time. A teenager deprived from her peers for a solid week is a snarling, writhing, mouth-foaming radioactive mutant, and I get to be locked in a brick box with her. Yay! There�s my danger for the week. That ought to shorten any rut I�m in.

For now, I�m going to take the attitude of my Supergirl undies and run with it. I can almost leap the ottoman in a single bound.

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