Me: “Hey, I need your three sentence summary of the student news.”
D’Avonte: “Ms. M, you KNOW I hate the damn news.”
Me: (teacher face)
D’Avonte: “Fiiiiiiiine.”
Turns in summary…
“They’re talking about Trump and all his bullshit. It’s the same stuff with his bitchass every day. Why do you make me do this?”
Me: “Will you be my bad hombre?”
Ryan: “Only if you’ll be my nasty woman.”
(Don’t even ask what started this conversation…our texts have a narrative thread that falls somewhere between mescaline overdose and fever-dream.)
Ryan: How would you like a Trump-Cruz ticket.?
Me: I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of me dying.
Ryan: That’s something you could put on Pay-Per-View.
(A second later…)
Ryan: To be clear…Trump-Cruz, not your dying.
Me: Thanks for clarifying, sweetie. Wait, are you saying my death isn’t good enough for Pay-Per-View?
Ryan: Yeah…I don’t think I can win here, so I’m just going to tell you you’re pretty and hope for the best.
Yeah, yeah, yeah…I’ve been slacking with the writing, but I’m going to defend myself and say that I’ve been tied up with Christmas, getting back to work, and my ex-husband holding my children for ransom. True story.
Anyhoo, one of you, and you know who you are, emailed me, asking if I’d secretly won the lottery and had taken off for parts unknown. Another of you emailed asking if I was “Seriously dead or just sitting in an asylum and haven’t earned internet privileges, yet”. I think we can all agree that the second option is far more likely.
Regardless…if any of the following things happen, you’ll know who won the Powerball.
Let’s be honest…this movie was an episode of Criminal Minds with chocolate.
10. Oprah Winfrey names me one of her new favorite things.
Me: (singsonging in the kitchen) “It’s the weeeeeekend! You know what that means!”
(Boys whispering in their room.)
Liam: “Shit, that means the crockpot is coming out.”
Xavier: “And that she’s not wearing pants.”
Me: “I HEARD THAT!”
Liam: (whispering) “Dog ears.”
Xavier: “Mommmmm!”
Me: “What?”
Xavier: “I need a haircut.”
Me: “You just got your hair cut a few weeks ago.”
Xavier: “Mom! People kept coming up to me all day, saying, ‘Trump 2016’!”
Okay…he has a point.
Okay, so for those of you who watch ANY news whatsoever, it should come as no shock that my beloved Arizona has gotten a reputation as being…shall we say…flamingly racist. While I understand why it looks like we’re all a bunch of backwoods hillbilly cretins most of the time, I feel I must defend my state’s honor.
To begin, it is a fact that almost no one over the age of 30 is actually FROM Arizona, and we are almost entirely populated by transplants from colder states, who came here for the weather, and promptly started complaining because our golf courses were too close to Mexico. You know how everyone has that ONE embarrassing racist uncle, who screams about immigrants and thinks that Obama was born in Kenya? Well, that guy got sick of Wisconsin winters or shoveling snow in Michigan, and moved his ass to Phoenix. So the problem isn’t actually Arizonans, per se…it’s that we have a HUGE population of older, conservative transplants, who unfortunately vote religiously, and who are magnetically attracted to the candidate wearing the fanciest tinfoil hat.
Now, recently, we’ve gotten some attention, AGAIN, for yet another idiot who has taken to leading armed (and I’m talking automatic weapons, here) protests against Muslims at local mosques while wearing (and selling, because we can’t miss a sales opportunity) t-shirts that say things that I won’t repeat, but involve expletives that aren’t, shall we say, neighborly. Once again, we get bad press, but what the national news doesn’t mention, is that he JUST moved here from California, so once again we get credit for a village idiot who wandered off from another state. I do not want to give this asshole any MORE attention by mentioning his name, but Ryan and I call him, ‘The Ritz’.
Shockingly, as it turns out, pissing off one of Earth’s largest religions has consequences. First it means that you will get thoroughly spanked, on national TV, by both Anderson Cooper and Philip Mudd, a former senior official with the FBI and CIA. Secondly, it means your family will have to go into hiding until things cool down.
Well, as it turns out, this idiot lives down the street from Ryan’s sister, Susan, so her entire block was curiously populated with a lot of unmarked paneled vans and dark windowed American sedans. Because we’re naturally fascinated by this insanity, we have Susan sending us daily updates.
**And, yes, this conversation took place BEFORE Donald Trump’s asinine remarks about McCain.
Ryan: She just texted. The Ritz’ wife came back! SHE ACTUALLY CAME BACK!
Me: There is no way she did that of her own volition. He must be blackmailing her. She must have killed a drifter or a United States Senator, or something.
Ryan: Has anyone actually seen John McCain lately?
Me: Real McCain? Or amazingly lifelike, animatronic McCain?
Ryan: I’m pretty sure The Ritz is keeping that McCain in his garage.
Me: What’s he doing with it!?
Ryan: Well, you know how lonely he must have been when he was in hiding with his wife gone…robot McCain was his only comfort.
Me: I wonder what robot McCain’s O-Face looks like.
Ryan: …
Me: What?
Ryan: That’s the sound of me becoming impotent.
Fisticuffs and Shenanigans 