The Great Fart in a Bag Incident

The past few weeks (or months) have been devoid of blog updates due to the chaos and turmoil commonly known as moving. After 10 years my husband and I made the decision to sell our house, the house we became a family in, to the person willing to throw the most money at us. I'm sure as I turn to leave for the last time, our boxes loaded into the U-Haul and the rooms scoured of our very existence I will shed a tear but at this moment with the memory of paint fumes still dancing in my nostrils and caulk still clinging to odd and surprising surfaces that I have no recollection of affixing it to I can say that I will not miss this bitch.

It took us a month. One month to pack up any item that personalized the place, to paint everything a grey-beige that popular redecorating sites are now cleverly calling "greige", to caulk all possible surfaces that join any other surfaces and to clean the place in a manner that would say to the average home buyer, "Hey you! We are very clean people! We commonly and with great frequency climb chairs to dust off the top of this refrigerator and make it a point to remove all spices and canned goods from the lazy susan on a weekly basis to divest its shelves of even a trace of dust. Do not be fooled! There has NEVER been a cobweb so impressive dancing from this bathroom light fixture that these here homeowners left it there just to see how long it could get and these window sills have ALWAYS been this immaculate. They were in no way deemed a "lost cause" and painted over in haste due to the impressive level of grime that had permanently marred their surfaces. Come and live here! This is the house where dirt fears to tread!"

(I'm aware that I quote Poltergeist too much. It's a sickness.)

The children were very confused. Questions ranged from, "Why are you cleaning my bathtub with a toothbrush?" to "Can I bring my princess cup to our new house?" My favorite question came one night, however, as I leaned across my daughter's toddler bed while I tucked her in. She was very concerned about the move. The conversation unfolded like this:

Julia: Well, can I take my bed with me to a new house?

Me: Of course baby. We can take all of our stuff, we just put it in a truck and take it somewhere else.

Julia: Can I bring the dogs?

Me: Yes, the dogs will come with us.

Julia: And can I bring Patrick?

Me: Yeah, Patrick is part of the package bud. He comes too.

Julia: (looking over my shoulder into the darkened room behind me) And can I bring him?

Me:(looks nonchalantly over my shoulder into the void of her opened closet and then back at her)...who baby?

Julia: (empatically gestures with her chin back over my shoulder) Him! I want him to come with us too!

Me: (All the hair on my body standing at military attention) Yeah baby. You can bring him too.

If you haven't read previous posts, I can only assume she is referring to Michael Taxenor. He's been established as the little boy who "lives in her room" and gets brought up an a regular basis, which serves to freak me the fuck out every single time and now he's been given the invite to imprint on us like that demon in Paranormal Activity. Neat!

It appears, however, that it may be awhile before we can actually load our earthly and unearthly possessions into a moving van for we have yet to find a house despite the fact that ours sold in two weeks. We put an offer in on the house of my dreams, it fell through and now we are fortunate enough to have sold our house to people who wanted to rent it out in the first place. Translation: we're renting our own house. It is weird to say the least, but beats the hell out of having to move twice, sign a long term lease somewhere or buy a place out of desperation. The right place will come along and in the meantime I intend to mine the rich vein of comedy gold that this situation has revealed, beginning with what I am calling either "Fart Bag-Gate" or "The Great Fart in a Bag Incident of 2013."

Almost immediately upon the house closing, I was sitting on the recliner, quietly reading a nuanced, well written and finely crafed novel about love and the human psyche while my husband caught a few afternoon z's to make up for a long night at the fire station the night before when I heard a ruckus at the front door.

(it is not well written)

Not wanting the dogs to bark and wake everyone up, thus ending a rare moment of afternoon quiet alone with a cup of coffee and a good book,

(it is not a good book)

I darted for the front door and opened it just before a pre-teen looking kid could ring my door bell. 

"Does Billy O'Shaunessy live here?"

He and the three kids standing behind him all regarded me with shit eating grins and I knew I was about to be pranked, but how? He didn't go with, "Is your refrigerator running?" or lead in with something that could be answered with "That's what she said!" so I was truly lost in figuring out where this was going. I could only surmise that this was going to terminate in such a way that involved a vague, mildly hostile epithet directed at my mother and so I pressed on, my eyes narrowing.

"Who?"

The kid's expression grew more excited and I knew he was getting ready to throw a zinger at me that I would never see coming. I was close in that, I never saw the fourth kid who'd been hiding around the corner coming as he jumped out at me and launched a foreign object at my face. It all happened so fast that I didn't have time to even freak out, I just kind of instinctively moved my head to the side so that whatever he'd just hurled at me hit the door and exploded behind my head instead of in my eyeballs. All I could think at the time was, "This is totally just like when George Bush dodged that shoe."

(Look at how perturbed the guy next to him is. Someone just hurled a shoe at the President of the United States and he's all, "Really now, must you be so childish?")

The smell hit me before I even saw it and I new it was a stink bomb. Now I was pissed. These little assholes didn't even have the creativity to set it off on a school bus with no possibility for escape or in the room with a substitute teacher when her back was turned like a civilized adolescent. Nooooo, THESE twats tried to blind a stranger and ended up dousing the front door of what has only recently become her rental property and then commenced to run down the street like a pack of giggling hyenas. If I had to paint that front door again, it was going to be with their virgin blood.

(How can you blame them? They were, like, 12.  I'm 35 and think this is hilarious.)

They tore off down my street and I calmly yelled for my husband to call the cops. I didn't really feel like this was a cop related situation, but I wanted the little shits to run home with the idea that cops were coming instead of stinking up anyone else. The idea that they might pee a little was not unwelcome either. However, when you rouse a man out of a sound sleep with the phrase, "Red, call the cops" no matter how calmly you utter it, said man is going to immediately get an adrenaline surge and leap from the couch like a ninja while yelling, "What? Why? What happened?"

Loudly enough for the punks benefit, who were still in ear shot, I exclaimed, "Some fucking kids just threw a stink bomb into our house." He tore through the house for his car as I stood out on the sidewalk watching them run for the corner. They were cackling their heads off, looking back over their shoulders periodically at the idiot chick they'd just pranked.

They started like this:

Then, upon looking back one last time to gloat only to see my pretty enormous husband run out like a serial killer and hop into his car, they were like this:

He chased them around the neighborhood a bit, obviously NEVER intending on catching them but wanting to scare the ever loving shit out of them as rightful punishment. Upon their second pass through a park to escape my husband and his big bad Sentra, a landscaper looked quizzically at the departing children and then back at their pursuer. My husband pulled over and let the guy know what was happening and the landscaper cracked up. "Mission accomplished, they're all bawling their eyes out!"


Which made me picture them like this:

If this entire story were an Aesop Fable, I believe the moral would read:

If you must revile your neighbor, make certain first that he cannot reach you...in his Nissan Sentra.

Now, you might be asking yourself, "Hey, where are the kids? Isn't this a blog about her kids and all the ways she screws up basic parenting skills?"

Do not dispare. You see, upon hearing the initial commotion at the front door, my daughter walked out of her room and was standing in the hallway during the entirety of Fart-bag-a-pa-loo-sa. She heard me tell my husband to call the cops and heard me tell him that "some fucking kids threw a stink bomb into our house." I was not aware of her presence until I walked back inside and saw her there. I didn't know how much of the entire scene she'd witnessed until she skipped through the kitchen later while singing, "Fucking, fucking, fucking!" with a big smile on her face. She's said it twice more since and we haven't heard it again. I'm sure she's saving it for ballet class.

And, as a parting gift, I leave you with a video of my son shoving me to the ground in front of the other preschool parents during my daughter's Halloween parade. I was crouching down with him on my knee in order to get a good video angle when my son spotted my daughter and became enraged that I wouldn't allow him to run over and join her in her parade. Shoving ensued. The other parents pretended that they didn't see it. I allowed them to keep up that ruse. Not a word has been spoken of it since.

Happy Friday!

Have I lost control or did I lack it in the first place?

The course of the last few weeks and, more specifically, the last few days have caused me to ponder some fundamental questions about the state of affairs in my household. From the outside looking in, I see other families operating on a functional level that seems to mirror what any reasonable person would call typical. That's not to say that these families don't appear to have their own fair share of ebbs and flows in the craziness category. It just seems, in comparison to the chaos that swirls around my existence like a category 5 hurricane (sometimes even complete with debris and liquid of dubious origins) that the other families I know aren't subject to the same types of all out pandemonium that we have up in here. Which begs the question, is it me? Is it something inherent in my DNA that spurs children to act like demons? Like some kind of pheromone I'm releasing that triggers a biological response, culminating in abhorrent decision making? Is it my utter lack of leadership abilities, despite the fact that I try with all of my might to possess a shred of the intimidation factor that my mother and those of my peer group possess? Are my kids just heathens? In examining this, I decided to look at the events of the last week and assess the situation for what it is in an effort to come up with a game plan.

Incident #1

The child safety lock on my silverware drawer is broken and the children know this. Lately they have taken to retrieving every spoon in the drawer that they can carry and using them as their "tools" so that they can pretend to fix their toys. This didn't bother me until I grew tired of washing fifteen spoons per day, so when I heard my daughter clanging around in the drawer a few days ago and looked up from my email to see her walking through the house with a spoon, I had this interchange with her:

Me: Julia, can you please put that spoon back? It isn't a toy and Mommy doesn't feel like washing all of the spoons every five minutes.

Julia sighs theatrically and then saunters back over to the silverware drawer as I redirect my attention to the computer monitor. The sound of the drawer opening is followed by the clanging sound of silverware being thrown back in amongst its compatriots. 

Julia: I put it in my butt.

Me: (Looking up in alarm, hoping against hope that I had misheard).....you what?

Julia: I didn't put it all the way in my butt, but I put it a little bit in my butt.

I have no idea on which spoon the assault was committed but I can say that all spoons were scrubbed like Meryl Streep in Silkwood.

Incident #2

Taking my children to the mall on a hot Arizona day is one of the few activities I can do with them by myself. They are 3 1/2 and 2, which means that they may have the muscle ability to walk on their own but lack the emotional maturity to listen to reason (and possibly a condition in which they are physically unable to hear their mother's voice at all, not unlike when Carolann couldn't hear her father in Poltergeist). Taking them to the mall allows me to put them in the double stroller, walk them to the play area, watch them play in a contained space, take them to the Disney Store so that they can color and dance with the music on the big screen in the back, feed them Subway, spit out a few quarters for them to ride the carousel and then load them up for home. It kills a lot of time, is air conditioned and I'm normally able to pull it off with no issues. 

During better times. The frantic yells for Patrick are good foreshadow for Incident # 3

All was going well a couple of days ago until we hit the Disney Store portion of our rendezvous. Instead of an unstructured coloring time with music like they usually have, a kindly Cast Member was leading the children in a pirate activity that coincided with videos and songs from Jake and the Neverland Pirates. Four kids were lined up in front of her as they pretended to fly with pixie dust, looked through imaginary telescopes and practiced their pirate vocabulary. Adorable. 

My kids were over it immediately. My son wandered over to the, now pushed aside, coloring table and began working on a picture while my daughter came over to me and held on to my legs as if something about the blonde woman cheerfully channeling Captain Hook was inherently evil. This kid is not shy, so I took it to mean that she might be running out of steam, at which point I suggested that we hit the streets and get some lunch to go. 

She lost....her fucking mind. 

She ran away from me, caught sight of a bucket of bouncy balls in her escape path, reached in and threw a gob of them up in the air in mid sprint so that they flew every direction and screamed the shrill, ear piercing scream that is only achievable with the vocal chords of a female toddler. Seriously, dogs in El Salvador heard her. I caught up with her and hoisted her up so that I could put her back in the stroller, only to have her stiffen to the point of utter straightness, still while shrieking the shriek of the maimed. It was like trying to put an angry department store mannequin into the back of a Graco double stroller. I was left with two options, I could wait out the tantrum in the middle of the Disney Store while everyone around was forced to listen to it or I could apply gentle, yet persistent, force to her solar plexus with my forearm in an attempt to get her to bend in half long enough to strap her into the stroller. I chose the latter, ignoring the burning stares of the parents whose children were now skipping with the Cast Member on a quest through the store for gold doubloons. 

I got her secured as she screamed in fury and realized I'd made a tactical error by putting her in the back as I loaded my son into the front. I'd been going for maximum containment when I placed her there, but  as I buckled my son it appeared that I'd sentenced him to a session of "How Many Times Can I Get Kicked In My Thoracic Vertebrae?"

I wasn't about to try and move her to the front seat after having to employ WWE moves to get her in the stroller the first time out so I lit out of the store, pushing them for all I was worth in an attempt to get out of the mall and to my vehicle as quickly as possible, all while trying to ignore the looks of disgust and mild empathy the kicking and screaming were eliciting in those I passed. I also tried to reassure my son that his anguish would soon be over, but I'm not sure he could hear me over the sound of the body blows. 

We'd made it to the exit just in time for her to level his seat with a kick that actually gave him whiplash and I finally lost my shit. I got down eye level with her and told her to knock it off, which she responded to by kicking her legs back into his seat and then leaving them extended so that he couldn't sit back. I tried to get her to relax her legs, but she held them firm while screaming wordless sounds of insanity.

You know how, in movies and in TV shows, they make Satan's voice really deep and guttural to go for both the intimidation factor as well as an evil and unnerving sense as well?

 I did that.

 In front of Kona Grill. 

While people were sitting on the patio enjoying a few California Rolls during their lunch hour. 

In my daughter's face. 

Put your feet down and stop kicking your brother or I will throw your blanket onto the freewaaaaaaay!

People stared. I got the kids to the car, loaded them up and burst into tears. Haven't been back to the mall since.

 Incident # 3

Our final incident occurred today. I actually got a full night sleep last night and was feeling ready to take on the world. I was turning over a new leaf in all of our lives. No more junk food. No more yelling. More reverse psychology. More positive reinforcement. I made the kids and I breakfast, got everyone dressed and we headed out to pick up lunch so we could spend some time at the fire station with their dad. I even went so far as to put a little gel in my son's hair so it would be all cute and David Beckham-esque as we went out to conquer the world. This decision will become pertinent later.

All went well as we hung out with dad and his crew at the station, so well in fact that I decided on our way to drop our library books off that the kids had earned the ability to go inside and pick a few movies instead of just dropping our books off in the drive thru like we were going to. Hoorays issued forth. We went inside the library and I grabbed the stuff I had on hold, then proceeded upstairs so the kids could play in the toddler area for a few minutes before we made our selections and headed home.

I was really congratulating myself at this point. The kids were playing quietly and looking at books while I took a gander at the Jillian Michaels selection I'd picked up. I was one of those moms! The ones whose kids just behaved and I could hang out with them without having to hover over them every second to keep them from going utterly nuts. If I'd had a Starbucks in my hand, the moment would have been complete.

Then we decided to leave. I told each kid they could pick a movie and two books, which when added to the four books I already had in my hand meant my arms were completely full by the time I'd gathered up our selections. I stood there for a second, trying to figure out the best way to accomplish getting all of our loot and my kids out at the same time and that's when all hell broke loose. 

My son saw my hesitation, saw my helplessness under the pile of books and I literally watched as the evil overtook him. If you remember from my Mother's Day post, my son is a runner and he is fast as shit even when I'm NOT bogged down with diet books and Chuggington DVDs. He broke into a giggling sprint, which proved to be irresistible to my daughter, and they headed for the stacks as a unified and now shrieking front. People on the computers looked at me with annoyance, but unlike the irritated and disapproving stares of the mall-goers, I actually felt like these jack holes could go fuck themselves. They were in the children's section of the public library, if they wanted quiet they could have gone to the reference section for god's sake. 

I walked calmly and resolutely to the end of the stacks, as that was where the sound of horribly behaved children was heading, and willed myself not to start yelling for them. I may have not felt bad for the bit of noise my kids were kicking up, but I wasn't about to add to the cacaphony. I intercepted them with my best disappointed face, which only made my son crack up and act like he was going to take off again. My disapproval is like an aphrodisiac to that kid. Thinking fast, I asked his retreating back if he wanted a movie and he was thankfully unaware that it was a movie he'd already picked. I made a big show of handing him the DVD and asking for his help in carrying it and this newfound task seemed to stop his need to escape long enough for me to herd them downstairs to the checkout kiosks. 

We got downstairs after a blistering lecture in the elevator and they stood compliantly next to me for a few seconds as I began scanning our items for check out, but soon the allure of running around the lobby area was too great and I began frantically loading books onto the scanner to finish the job before they tripped someone, knocked something over or ran again. Library employees watched the scene from the front desk with awe, which I've become used to seeing in the faces of those we encounter on outings. There are things you never want to see public employees surprised by, especially those that are exposed on a regular basis to kids and the horrid behavior of your children ranks highly. 

I had finally gotten all of the books scanned when my son figured out that the door was automatic and charged through it into the open air. I dropped everything and gave chase, getting halfway around the front of the building before I was close enough to him to reach out and grab him. Unfortunately, due to my need to make his hair all stylish and spiky, that was what my hand connected with and I yanked him to a stop by it which caused a homeless man on the bench in front of us to cock an eyebrow at me. I am not making this up. I have now been judged for my shit parenting form by a homeless dude on a library bench. 

I picked up my son, who was giggling about the entire affair mind you, and went back in to retrieve my books and purse from their discarded pile in the lobby, at which point my son decided to bite my shoulder like a gremlin in front of the check out clerk. 

I'll be taking all that crap back through the drive thru next time.

So is it me? Is it them? Is it some sort of combination of the two that has produced a perfect storm of evil spawn and terrible parenting, thusly condemning me and my family to angry stares, public meltdowns, lifetime bans from various venues and nights spent staring at the ceiling wondering how in the hell I'm going to make productive members of society out of them? Do other parents have to chase their kids down so they don't enter restaurant kitchens? Do you, dear reader, ever pause with a spoon hovering just outside of your mouth to wonder if it's been in someone's butthole?

In the face of the evidence, I can honestly say that trying to come up with a game plan seems futile at best. I have no idea what I'm doing wrong and thusly, no idea how to alter that behavior. For now, it appears, I just have to wait it out and bask in public censure.

Fat Lips, Mimi's Cafe, Clint Eastwood and Lucy Liu

Ah Mother's Day, the one day a year in which it is socially sanctioned for we maternal units to cast aside our shroud of martyrdom and demand that those we love most in the world worship us for the poop cleaning, booger wiping, tear dabbing, wound cleaning, food prepping, car pooling, schedule keeping, non sleeping, etc that we all do on the regular.

This worship can come in many forms; flowers, some form of edible delivered to us in bed and macaroni necklaces ranking amongst the highest, but really the reward one enjoys most for their efforts is unique to each mom. I, for one, am a fan of brunch. I have virtually no idea what it is about it that makes me love it so, I mean really, it's just a late breakfast, but everything about it makes me happy. From the sparkling mimosas in their long, flutey glasses to the crispy bacon and crunchy potatoes to the satisfying way the word just pours from one's mouth (brrr-uuun-cccchhhh. Say it slowly. It's super fun.) I find myself dreaming of Mother's Day brunch the moment that the calendar rolls into May.

So it should then help to paint the picture of how my Mother's Day went when I tell you that my husband was on shift (he's a firefighter), which left me all by my lonesome with two toddlers. What does one do when they find themselves in need of some Mother's Day lovin' and the person who is supposed to orchestrate it is tasked with saving lives that day like a selfish asshole? You horn in on your sister's Mother's Day plans and get yourself invited to her place.

It was a lovely affair. Her husband put out a huge spread, they provided everyone's favorite donuts and all of the moms got to eat on fancy glass plates while the rest of the dirty masses got paper ones. I felt truly pampered and worthy of the honor of Mother. Then my daughter fell off of a barstool and cracked her face on the tile, which signaled that it was time for us to depart.

(I assure you, she is fine.)

Then it was on to the Mother's Day Ice Cream Social that my husband's captain decided to throw for us ladies at the firehouse. This was very sweet and I am very grateful to him for thinking of us. Having said that, it usually works better to have everyone down to the station when you aren't among the three busiest stations in the city. We got a lot of great action images of our guys running to the truck as the emergency tones deafened everyone, but they had gotten us ice cream for the occasion and we all felt very sincerely appreciated. Thank you guys!

(When the captain ain't around, the rookies get the recliners.)

I went to bed that night pretty tired and looking forward to my husband coming home the next day so we could get down to the business of what I have heretofore entitled "Second Mother's Day." This was going to be the real deal, the type of celebrating and pampering that I was watching people post about on Facebook all day. 

Except, I learned upon waking up that he was going to be delayed in getting home by a couple of hours. Panic welled up within me. Any rational person would realize that he would be along soon, would give the kids a toaster waffle or some equally substance-less snack and patiently await his arrival so that everyone could sojourn to the long awaited brunch together in due time. But what has two thumbs and isn't rational? Well, yeah Jodi Arias is correct, but I was actually referring to myself here.

So I loaded the kids up and headed off to Mimi's Cafe because, damn it, I was getting an omelet, bacon, breakfast potatoes and a piping hot cup of coffee that I didn't have to brew myself and I didn't care what I had to do to get it. Which included actually eating at Mimi's Cafe.

The fact that the hostess put me and my kids in a booth directly adjacent to one occupied by a single, glaring man in work boots in the midst of an otherwise completely empty section of the silent restaurant had bells of doom gonging in my mind. I mean, there was no one there but this guy and us. It was Mimi's Cafe at 7:45 a.m. on the Monday morning directly following Mother's Day, the place practically had tumbleweeds blowing through it and this guy was giving us his meanest Clint Eastwood glare. Naturally, the best place for us should be immediately beside him.

(Yes, we are punks. No, we do not feel lucky.)

Still, I tried to be positive. I mean, I brought legos, that should be enough to keep the kids pacified until our meals come, right? They kept it together as drinks were ordered, happily played with their blocks as the coffee came out and smiled genially as I ordered the food for, you see, they know that in order to achieve an advanced level of evil they must wait until orders have been placed to lose their shit and start throwing lego hail mary passes across the dinning room. I got up to retrieve the blocks, returned to chew my daughter's ass for throwing them and was stopped short by the sight of my 2-year-old running with his cheetah legs straight for the kitchen. I burst into a run after him, catching his shirt just in time to keep him from getting to the food prep tables, but not before he'd roused the attention of the entire kitchen staff who were staring at the tiny interloper and me with looks that said, "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

I got him back to the seat and proceeded to start packing up the legos as a consequence for throwing them, at which point my daughter emitted a shriek so high pitched and so shrill that I'm not entirely convinced it wasn't a signal to her dolphin people that she was in danger and to assemble post haste. This was the last straw for The Outlaw Josey Wales next to us. At least I'm taking his decision to slam his hands angrily down on his table and leave the restaurant mid french toast with no tip on the table as such.

I can now officially say that the behavior of my children has driven strangers to vacate public areas. It was now just me, my kids and my staggering inability to keep my kids under control left in the restaurant and I burst into tears. I still can't conceive of many things that are more pathetic than a grown woman wearing a shirt with a jelly donut on it having a pity party at a Mimi's Cafe but if you can think of some I'd seriously love to hear them. 

(I'm not kidding, this is the shirt. It depicts a jelly donut murder, and I was sobbing in it.)

I pulled my shit together in time for the food to come, shoved it down my gullet as quickly as possible, ran after my son one more time as he bolted behind the bar (he didn't even have the common decency to make me a fucking bloody mary while he was back there) and then left, fending off the offers of help from two well meaning employees who were obviously so moved by my lack of parental abilities that they felt compelled to lend a hand in bringing the ineptitude to a stop. 

It was a quiet ride home. Maybe, I thought, it was on the fitting side that Mother's Day would come and go with no fanfare directed my way. I clearly suck at this. In 24 hours my daughter had sustained a bloody facial injury, I'd lost my 2-year-old twice in a restaurant and driven a guy from the premises with my lack of leadership ability. Maybe I should work a little on my technique before I start expecting any gold medals here.

My husband arrived home mere moments after I did with a huge Dutch Bros coffee in his hand for me and a card telling me how wonderful I was. He added a post script to the bottom that read "Get ready to go shopping..." and clarified upon my questioning gaze that he wanted to take me to "Lucy Liu Lu Lu Diamonds, Whatever" for Mother's Day.

The rest of the conversation went like this:

Me: What in the hell is Lucy Liu Lu Lu Diamonds?
Him: That workout clothes store you like.
Me: You mean Lululemon?
Him: Sure, yeah, that place.
Me: A guy at Mimi's Cafe slammed his hands down on the table and left mid breakfast this morning because the kids were acting up and I started sobbing in public.
Him: (Scowling) Fuck that guy, he should have eaten in his kitchen if he didn't want to be around people.

And so, I have to say, my Mother's Day turned out relatively awesome in the end. The Mimi's story has gotten a little humorous with the benefit of time and I scored some new workout clothes to wear at Zumba, an activity that I will dedicate my next post to as it is a shit show so incredible as to not be ignored.

Now that a week has passed, the dust has settled and some perspective may or may not have been gleaned, if you'd care to share your Mother's Day stories, I'd love to hear them. The Good, the Bad and even the Ugly.