When I’m not busy saving the world creating bumper stickers, I sometimes contemplate important philosophical questions, such as “Who’s more annoying, my cat or my kids?” It’s not immediately apparent, since they really are annoying in many of the same ways. For example, they both demand my attention, walk around whining, poop a lot, wake me up in the middle of night (often by jumping on my head), knock shit over, dart around the house recklessly, and require feeding and playing and cuddling.

But after careful consideration, I’ve discovered that my cat is indeed less annoying than my kids. Here’s why.

1. The cat poops in her litter box, as opposed to her diaper.
2. The cat cleans herself. Without arguing.
3. When the cat doesn’t like her dinner, she just walks away, as opposed to flailing on the ground exclaiming for 15 minutes that we never eat anything good and she’s just SOOOO starving she’s going to die.
4. When the cat knocks something over, she runs away startled rather than playing in the mess and blaming her brother.
5. I can chuck the cat off the bed in the middle of the night when she irritates me.
6. The cat will be entertained with a wadded up piece of paper for 12+ hours, unlike my kids, who have at least 75,000 toys but STILL can’t find ANYTHING to do.
7. I can punish the cat by squirting it in the head with water and not feel guilty about it.
8. The cat’s clothes are already on her and she doesn’t outgrow them, complain about them, need new ones or clean ones.
9. The cat sleeps in a ball at the foot of the bed, as opposed to horizontally across the mattress with her feet in my face.
10. The cat doesn’t talk.

AND, that brings us to the one I forgot: The cat can be left with a bowl of water, some food and a scratch post for many hours or even a day or two at a time, while I go on vacation. The last time I did that with one of my kids, I got in BIG trouble.

Which reminds me, dear friends who refer to their pets as “fur babies” or just “babies,” your cat is not your baby. Incidentally, neither is your dog.

Please stop saying that to people with actual kids. It just makes us jealous.

THE CAT IN QUESTION

What I learned this week…

1. Some things just never work out well. For example, 6-year-old boys and Scotch tape. I don’t want to talk about it.
2. Did you know 13-month-olds can climb bunk bed ladders? All the way to the top? In the time it takes you to transfer two loads of laundry?
3. Yeah, neither did I. Until yesterday.
4. Our dog Pete likes to dig holes but stick around the yard. Our dog Odie does not like to dig holes, but he also does not like to stick around the yard. So together, they result in two equally irritating phenomena: ruined yards and lost dogs. Isn’t that cute?
5. I’m sorry, but PETA people (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) are weird. I don’t generally, um, generalize in such a blatant manner, but I have never once met a PETA person who struck me as stable, or somebody I’d be willing leave my kid with for an hour. My dog? Totally. But not my kid.
6. You know what’s a sad thought? Someday Bob Dylan will die. I was listening to him the other morning and kept thinking “My God, Bob, you’re just so good.”
7. Our goldfish died because its bowl got too dirty to sustain life. That officially makes me an animal killer and I’m sad about that. I didn’t mean to kill it, and I suppose there’s a slight chance the kitty whacked it with a claw, causing terminal damage, but I’m pretty sure it was the not cleaning thing. Go ahead, hate. I know I suck. But please don’t call the PETA people.
8. Not really. I don’t suck that bad. You know who does suck that bad, though? Casey Fucking Anthony. Nobody’s going to weep the day that woman kicks the bucket.
9. Okay so I KNOW somebody has to give a shit about lab animals and bunnies and whatnot, so thanks for that, PETA, but in my experience y’all have odd social skills and are a bit extremist in your judgments of others and their animal-related choices. For example, I once bought a purebred dog. A PETA acquaintance heard about this and flipped her cookie that I purchased a dog rather than adopted one from the shelter. I mean she was worked up. My thing is, with all the violence and famine and social injustice in the world, are we really going to get our panties in a knot over something like THAT?
10. Anyhoo, have I mentioned I love Autumn? I LOVE OCTOBER. I don’t know why, but pumpkin patches make me happy. It’s as close as I get to festive. Although, I hate adult Halloween. I loathe dressing up. Annoying effing holiday.
11. Pumpkins, though? And haystacks and cornfields and wagons and my kids in little costumes collecting junk food? Love it.

Happy almost October. By the way, how cute is this little number?

So…wanna hear something great? My daughter got a “pink slip” for punching some kid.

Yeah. Not that great. Or really at all.

The good news is it wasn’t in the face. It was in the arm, which somehow, in my mind, makes it better. And she was provoked, which makes it better only when I consider the alternative: child randomly punching people without being provoked (totally more alarming, don’t ya think?).

So…she was trying to do her work (which is totally believable given her oddly driven, focused and responsible approach to the world), and some kid started making farting noises in her face repeatedly. She tried moving; he followed her. She walked over to the teacher but the teacher was busy – the kid kept on and on – she grew enraged, hit her max – and punched him. The end.

When I first heard this story from Ava, entertained the image of some boy tormenting my child, invading her space and disrespecting her requests to back off, the first thing I wanted to say was “Good. Sounds like the lil’ fucker deserved it. Next time, kick him in the teeth too.” But if I regularly followed the first thought that entered my mind, I would undoubtedly be in jail, so I waited for something more suitable to creep in.

Winning Idea #2 was that it was the teacher’s fault. She wasn’t watching. Why the hell was she letting some spaz walk around bothering kids who were trying to work? Clearly she’s a bad teacher and I should call the school and yell empty threats.

Upon more careful consideration, however, I realized that one was a fail as well.

“Because the bottom line is, kid, no matter what, you just can’t hit people.” (Unless they are touching you, in which case you have every right to go to town wailing their asses into oblivion.)

This one is kind of complicated though. Of course she shouldn’t have lost it like that. On the other hand, I hear this kid has ADD and didn’t take his medication and was, apparently, pretty much batshit crazy toward her. And everybody has their limits. But no matter what he did, Ava can’t hit people. That’s obvious and I told her as much.

What bothers me is that it feels like my kid spends more time dealing with the antics of her classmates than doing any actual learning. Maybe it’s an age thing (4^th graders, anyone?) or maybe it’s a public school thing (this is my first time with kids in public school, though I went there as a kid).

Her old school was really structured and traditional and strict, which has its own drawbacks, but at least I can guarantee every kid was given ample space (metaphorically and literally) to do his or her work, and there is no way a teacher would not have intervened if some kid was chasing another down making farting noises in the classroom.

Part of me wants to stick it out and see how it develops, see if it calms down, see if she adjusts. Part of me wants to get her the hell outta there.

You guys have any experience with this sort of thing? Would love to hear it.

There’s really no appropriate introduction for this, except to say that, for funsies, I decided to create a few bumper stickers. You know, things I would put on my car, were I not afraid of getting mowed down by some irate stranger.

By the way, if you are easily offended or sensitive or believe some things are sacred and should just not be made fun of openly on the internet, I suggest you skip this post. No really. I warned you…I’ll give you a chance to think about it…

Still here?

Good. I knew you’d stay.

That’s why we’re friends.

******************

********************

**********************

************************

*****************

**************

*********************

*********************

******************

Okay seriously. Should we print one of these?

What I learned this week…

1. It’d be great if my baby would stop getting into the trash. And the cat food. And possibly the refrigerator. That’s all I ask.
2. I realized recently that every single other person in my home thinks bodily functions are fascinating and farts are amusing. It’s not that I’m above it. I just really don’t think it’s funny.
3. You know what I do think is funny? This: at 12pm I go to class to learn how to teach grammar to non-native English speakers. Almost immediately after, I go to another class where we discuss how it’s unnecessary to teach grammar to non-native English speakers.  Graduate school, yay.
4. Homeschooling is going well. And by “well,” I mean “not as bad as it could be were my son a sociopath and I a crackhead.” Pretty much everything I planned is not working and the toddler is posing an unexpected difficulty considering she suddenly and randomly abandoned the morning nap she’s been taking since birth, which is, incidentally, the only time I have each day to really focus on just teaching Rocket – because I can’t do it in the afternoons because I have my own school and evidently the child’s brain loses its ability to do schoolwork after 11am. (Now, students, that’s what we call a “run-on sentence.” They’re terrible. Never use them.)
5. I’m hoping it’s a transitional thing and it’ll smooth out. You know. Someday.
6. And I’ll grow okay with the fact that my son is 6 and doesn’t want to read. End of story. (Ha. Ha. Ha.)
7. So check this out. If we put the cat food on the kitchen floor where it belongs, the baby eats it. If we put the food on the kitchen table, the cat thinks she’s allowed on the kitchen table (sound reasoning there), and consequently LIVES up there, eating the food we should put away after meals but don’t. BUT if we put the food anywhere else in the house, the cat won’t get fed because I’ll forget about it. There’s some real complicated shit in my life.
8.  My baby spent a good portion of the weekend eating dirt. At one point I actually heard myself say (to somebody expressing some rendition of concern regarding said dirt-eating): “No it’s cool. It’s clean dirt.” Yep, I’m there.
9. Sometimes I see my husband. That’s nice.
10. I read an article recently about how parents shouldn’t use sarcasm around their kids because it causes “smart-alecky” kids. I think that is great advice and I’ll be rebuilding my sense of humor as soon as I get a free moment.

Have a great week, people. And look at this. We did a science experiment together and it was freaking perfect and I felt like a good mom and homeschooler. Yeah, that happened once. Once.