beautification
(or, Salon Services for Single Moms)
Lately I’ve been taking my kids to the $4 haircut place in China World (several miles southwest of Chinatown) to get quick clipper jobs. This weekend, I was too lazy and took them to nearby Thank God It’s Haircuts, instead, for $15 each. Of course, the haircuts are better in China World.
While waiting for the drug-bleared and comprehension-impaired stylists to finish butchering my babies’ coifs, I flipped through the jumbo glossy style books. I’ve been letting my hair grow out for several months now and it’s just starting to look decent again. Someone suggested highlights to me the other day and I stubbornly announced that I liked my hair just the way it was. By the time I finished with the style books today, though, I was just about ready to go get a technicolor-striped fauxhawk and some tattooed eyeliner.
Instead, I took us all to the nail place. My hair looks fine, but my toenails look like Satan’s ass. It was time to splurge on a little physical improvement for Mommy.
Dallas and Josh punched each other while six-year-old Rory commented on my pedicure. I picked a nice, deep fuchsia for my first toe color of Spring 2004.
“Mom, you should pick red. You should get scarlet. I like scarlet. That’s, like, red.”
“Not today, baby. I’m gonna do this one, instead.”
“Well, can I paint my toenails scarlet, then?”
It hurts a liberal mother to deny her child simple pleasures of life because of the prejudice that exists in our world. (But he always ends up smearing the polish all over himself, anyway.) I told him he couldn’t paint his nails, but then I did ask my lady how much they’d charge to give him a manly (paintless) pedicure. She said $10 for toes and hands. I couldn’t beat that with a stick, so it was on. They handled his hangnails and monstrous pinky toes way better than I ever do. And he felt special. So, money well spent.
agony of defeat
(or, Fitness for Single Moms)
(or, “You’ll thank me later for not making the obvious pun with the word defeat.”)
Also today, I took my kids to one of our fine city’s well-known walking trails. We plan to start walking its three miles several times a week. This is something I’ve wanted to do with them for a while, but it wasn’t until they broke the PS2 (a/k/a Mom’s DDR Machine) that I became sufficiently motivated.
Three quarters of a mile in, someone had to pee. On second thought, all three children had to pee. What could I do but lead them into the piney woods? The tree we chose already smelled like urine – human or canine, I didn’t know. But the feces I stepped in on the way out was definitely that of a dog. (Or – jeez, I hope it was.)
“Gosh DANG it,” I said. (Except that I actually said “goddamnit,” but I hate to take the Lord’s name in vain with all the violent Passion of the Christ fans about.)
I wiped my shoe as best I could on grass, sticks and other trees. I was annoyed with myself. Wasn’t this the kind of thing I’d expect from one of the kids?
It still smelled like dog poop. Know why? Because Dallas had stepped in it with not one foot, but both. And it was on both his socks, too. And on his hand.
“I tried to wipe it,” he said. “I didn’t know what it was.”
Don’t hate me for this, but we rinsed his hand in the ground-level water fountain put at the park specially for dog lovers and their ever-shitting dogs. Then we walked the three-quarters of a mile back to our car, which, luckily, contained emergency plastic bags in its trunk. Then we drove home with Dallas holding his tainted hand above everything and his poop-shoe bag in his other hand. Then we changed our footwear and went on with our days.
I don’t care what anybody says – tennis shoes, expensive or not, come out of the washing machine just fine. Even the pebbles stuck in the treads are clean now. I just hope the neighbors don’t complain to the apartment management about the booming sounds coming out of our dryer as the tennis shoes bang the metal walls.
Did Erma Bombeck ever write about dog crap? Yeah, I bet she did.
In fact, I bet cavewoman mothers painted pictograms about it on their cave walls.
