Today, as I was making my way across town to pick up Queen Hadlifah from school, I noticed the minivan in front of me had a sign in the window that read BABY IN CAR! Yes, exactly like that – all CAPS and with an exclamation point, which felt kind of pretentious and like it was shouting at me that being alone in the car made me a more acceptable target for an accident. I could just imagine a reckless student driver careening down the road and choosing to send me to Jesus just because I didn’t have that all-powerful plastic sign.

It took me back to the days when those Baby on Board signs were so popular. Even back then I took offense to those annoying yellow and black billboards. Now as a mother of a six and four year old, I want those bad boys outlawed. If there is someone who needs a sign in the car, it’s me.

First of all, I don’t drive a minivan, which give me a break, but who drives a minivan without a buttload of ankle biters in tow? Do they really need to advertise that they have little ones on board? For the love of cleats, they probably have an entire soccer team in back.

Second of all, babies don’t usually cause accidents. It’s younguns who cause accidents. One moment, you’re peacefully cruising down the road, singing Sober with Pink and the next you are jumping the median because your child is screeching because her sibling looked at her.

Actually, I’m thinking of creating my own sign for my back window. It’ll read:

“Go ahead and make my day by having an accident with my car. I am a frickin’ stressed-out mother of two, who is on the edge and just looking for an excuse to pull you out of your car and beat you to death with my kid’s metal lunch box. Yes, I used to be an upstanding citizen with a will to live, but motherhood has caused me to lose any degree of self-control.”

I’ll let y’all know when my signs are ready for ordering.

Lyssa

This year, his fixation is skateboarding. He would literally spend every waking moment of his day at the skate park if we’d allow it. I’m usually good for about six hours on a Saturday before I start to lose the will to live, but as I watch my son wholeheartedly toil at mastering the half pipe, I have to give him credit. He will fall sixty times in an hour trying to master a skill, but he never complains. He just picks himself up, dusts himself off and goes back at it again. All I can think when I watch him is DANG!

Recently, I decided I could learn something from my tiny Tony Hawk. No matter how bad things get I have to pick myself back up, dust myself off and go back at it again.

And every time I fall up the stairs at the skate park, I remember his example. I pick myself up and pray that no one witnessed my idiocy. Obviously, B-Dogg doesn’t get his athleticism from me.

Since Queen Hadlifah is the (reluctant) Vice President of Research & Development for my design firm (read: sick venture), she gets to test and premiere all of my inventions. Being the marketing genius that I am, I take her to heavily populated Mommy Areas, like craft fairs, the mall and liquor stores. There she is tasked with strutting her stuff, acting adorable and keeping all creations on her person.

On one particular Saturday, I took Queen Hadlifah to an especially busy craft show. It was one of festivals that had funnel cakes as big as your head and local dance schools performing on a stage. Ever willing to share her Hannah Montana-inspired moves, my girl stood by the side of the stage and began to groove like she had a chainsaw in her panties.

Just as she was reaching her climactic, you-are gonna-crap-your-pants-when-you-see-this move, her shoes spontaneously combusted on her feet. One moment she was a tiny dancer, the next she was a kid with no shoe on one foot and Mary Jane shrapnel on the other. Her performance ended like the final moments of a July 4^th fireworks display.

With a defeated spirit, I slunk off to the car with my girl in tow.  The entire trip consisted of a concerned Queen Hadlifah repeating, “Mama, my shoes broke. Mama, my shoes broke.”

It’s during these times that I count my blessings that the authorities don’t intervene on behalf of my child.

As the story goes, when my Dad was a wee little baby, Grammy Ireland came home with a new snow suit for her little guy. Being like most mamas, she immediately wanted to see her purchase modeled by her toddler. For reasons that are unclear, she put her naked baby in the snow suit. She then zipped with a freakish enthusiasm that is a common trait amongst the Irelands.

My father let out a bloodcurdling yowl that could be heard all the way to Boston (they lived on Cape Cod), as his bee wee was zippered into the suit. For the love of male equipment, it was a miracle that she didn’t maim his goodies to the point that I was never born. Needless to say, that snow suit NEVER saw a snowy day, as the very sight of it threw my father into a fit of hysteria.

Fast forward sixty-three years to the women’s restroom at Chik-Fil-A. I was standing over the toilet, coaxing my girl to finish tinkling so we could join the rest of the family for dinner. When she finished her business, in a moment of Frenzied Ireland Gusto, I zipped her uniform skirt on the side of her hip. I was greeted by a screech that could have easily emptied the restaurant due to fear of a bear attack in the crapper. I had committed the same horrific crime as my grandmother before me.

To this day, Queen Hadlifah won’t let me near any of her zippers. Not her uniform skirt, not her jackets and most certainly not her footed pajamas. In fact, if I am so bold as to put my fingers near a zipper on her person, I am greeted with a VERY LOUD, “No, Mama! You hurt me!”

Of all the family traits that I could have shared with Grammy Ireland, her cooking skills, her cleaning skills or her ability to maintain her weight, but no, I had to become a criminally insane zipperer. You have to love genetics.

On Sunday, we spent the afternoon at the Ringling Brothers circus. The bad thing about being newly laid off is the gravity of your situation never quite leaves your stream of consciousness. It’s like half of your brain is aware of a clown dropping his trousers while the other half is thinking, “What the frick is going to happen to me and my family?”

When they brought out the tigers, as B-Dogg anticipated a mauling (“Boy, Mom those tigers look REALLY mad!”), I found myself going to my happy place. After a few minutes of deliberation, I decided I wanted to be a tiger for the following reasons:

• You look FABULOUS in animal prints
• The larger you are the more impressive you are as a tiger
• If you don’t like your boss – you chew his face off

Bitter, party of one.

First thing Monday morning, I got the news that millions of Americans have received in the last quarter. I joined the ranks of the unemployed. As my boss (who you have never heard me call a donkey’s rump) said, “your position was one that has been affected by the cost reduction initiative (a.k.a. buh-bye!).”

Bite me.

So here I am; bitter and forty, wondering why I gave so much to a company in exchange for an uninspired life.

One of my best buddies, Barbara, was also taken out in this agenda. Mind you, this is the most gracious gal you could have the good fortune to know. She recently survived an aggressive fight with breast cancer. Ever the inspiration to me, she reminded me that with each closed door a window opens. She dared me to step back and look at the situation in a new light. Much like Barbara’s presence in my life, her words breathed life into my weary soul.

So yesterday, as I sat eating my Princess Spaghetti O’s (because I’m fancy like that) and watching Barack Obama get sworn in as President, I thought, “Okay President Obama, now I’ve got some skin in the game. What are we going to do?”

For the past sixty hours, I have asked myself some questions. What do I want to be when I grow up? Do I want to feel a sense of contribution, which has been sorely absent in my career, or the just chase the almighty dollar? Does such a job exist and if it does, am I qualified?

It’s got me pondering the option of going into research. I’d like to focus my attention on the following subjects:

• Perfecting my Beanie Wienie Recipe. What is the perfect ratio of bean to wien?
• What cultures revere thunderous thighs and will FedEx deliver the excess fat from my thighs to those countries? Is there a FedEx container large enough to carry my thighs?
• How do I get a GoldenDoodle to stop attacking the refrigerator every time I get ice from the door dispenser?
• If sleep is the new sex, what is chocolate?
• Can you die from going cold-turkey on Starbucks (God help me)?
• Is there really a bottom to my laundry basket? If yes, what does it look like?

In the meantime, I am nursing my wounds, perusing the want ads and saving my pennies. If it kills me, I’m going to follow Barbara’s advice and find that open window.

Every time I stand in line at Starbucks, I get a flutter in my tummy that tells me that pure, unadulterated joy is just a moment away. When my Barista (who gave me a Christmas card just last month and let’s be real I have a nice personality and all but you have to visit A LOT in order for them to actually address your envelope with something other than CMFRAP WC W/DRIZZ) passes me my java, I blow kisses at the frosty wonderfulness in my hand. But there have been two separate occasions in my life that coffee has actually made me want to resort to a criminal level of violence.

It was a lovely spring morning in 1996. I was working in a hellish position at Dante’s Inferno and the only thing that prompted me to get up in the morning was a stop at the coffee shop near work. Every single morning, I would stop by for a “cup o’ will to live” and a blueberry muffin the size of Rhode Island.

On this particular morning in the parking lot at work, I got out of the car with coffee in one hand and muffin in the other. I noticed a man in a car trying to park next to me. Seeing that my open door was impeding his passage, I attempted to hasten my exit. To my dismay, he was practicing in that passive-aggressive, nudge-nudge, “transport your butt NOW” move with his car. In the confusion and building panic of the moment, I watched in horror as my untouched coffee slipped from my hand and dropped to the ground. Watching that liquid gold spread out on the asphalt, I felt RAGE bubble from the bottom of my gut up through the top of my blown off head. It took every bit of self restraint not to drag the guy from his car and pull his hair out in patches.

The second time was last Friday night in the parking lot of Target. I’d just finished a grueling round of grocery shopping and had loaded all the provisions into the trunk. I had my Venti in the shopping cart seat awaiting consumption on the trip home. Since it was frigid (like totally less than 60 degrees) and all I had on was a thin sweater, I decided to push my cart up on a curb instead of returning it to a corral. As I forcefully “bumped” it up onto the curb, I watched in horror (AGAIN) as my untouched (AGAIN) coffee launched up into the air, flew like Superman over the cart handle and bounced onto the ground with a sickening THUD. A stiff breeze brought it to my attention that my pants were also showered with cold, brown goop.

AGAIN, I felt RAGE bubble from the bottom of my gut up through the top of my blown off head, but this time for the laziest, imbecile I’d ever encountered... me. I heartily fought against the dual urges of dropping to the ground to lick up the mess or weep on my knees while yelling, “Why God, why me?”

Instead, I returned home defeated and empty, but it wasn’t a total loss. Sarah Jessica Barker enjoyed licking coffee from my trousers for the rest of the night.  In fact, I pretty sure I spotted the glint of java love in her eyes.

Sometimes, I am skeptical when my parents promise me that they didn’t drop me on my head as an infant because I do things that are so utterly redonkulous that even I amaze myself.

Tonight’s fiasco was brought to me by the Queen Hadlifah’s Pre-school Open House. While my dinner of pigs in a blanket baked in the oven, I haphazardly smeared makeup on my face. Just as I finished applying my mascara, the timer went off. Rushing to the kitchen, I opened the oven door and with a WHOOSH of hot air straight in my face, I found my eyelashes adhered together.

Rendered mostly sightless and with a blistering hot cookie sheet in hand, I desperately felt around the countertop with my empty hand for a space to rest my searing dinner before I dropped it on the floor. By the grace of God, no one was hurt by the incident, but it gave me one more reason to despise cosmetics.

In the “blinding” excitement, I forgot to check the pigs to see if they were done. Usually, I know things are cooked because of their blackened exterior, but there have been a few occasions when I have served food of a toasty brown hue. When dishing out dinner, I picked up the pigs and surprisingly discovered that they were rather doughy in consistency. Thus, I was confronted with my nightly moral question. Will this make my family Pepto Bismol sick or Salmonella peanut butter sick if consumed?

Used to making Sophie's Choice caliber decisions, I served the kids’ more delicate constitution the less doughy version. I took one for the team and consumed a rather raw crescent “blanket.” Sparky conveniently had to work late.

Needless to say, I’m keeping the phone close by tonight, just in case my stomach expands due to a rising blanket it my gut. Not that I’d know the difference anyway.

I am the fourth generation of mothers/daughters who share a friendship with their kin that few women experience. This arrangement worked out particularly well because each generation has been a cookie cutter version of the skipped generation. G3, Gammy and Queen Hadlifah share the same dispositions that make them nurturers, successful at understanding people and talented in all things domestic (sewing, cooking, mothering, etc.). GG and I are clones. We are career-oriented, less domestically talented (although GG was a good cook) and experienced a rocky start at motherhood. There is one common denominator that all five generations share – a warped sense of humor.

When it was confirmed that Queen Hadlifah was indeed going to be a girl, I knew in my heart that she would be a carbon copy of my mother. Immediately, I drew up a tight coaching schedule for my mother upon my wee one’s arrival. She was tasked with teaching my girl how to make mashed potatoes by the time she was six months old and potato salad by her first birthday. Then she’d round out her education with classes on altering my pants that would not longer fit from eating too many carbs.

Allow me to rat out my mother by saying she has completely shirked her domestic training with Queen Hadlifah. At four years old, my daughter has yet to be introduced to anything concerning mashing or salading potatoes. This has rendered me in charge of teaching my girl how to cook. Good gravy, how many times can a mother show her kid how to dump tator tots on a cookie sheet and throw them in the oven?

Last month, Queen Hadlifah took some of her Christmas money and went to Target to pick out a new toy. Not surprisingly, she picked out a Nintendo DS game called Cooking Mama. In this game, she learned how to make a variety of dishes. Many were quite exotic in nature, like Asian cuisine. Others were quite complicated, like boiling eggs.

Finally, after days of monopolizing my daughter’s time, I decided to see what was up with Cooking Mama. I elected to make pasta under her tutelage. Approximately fifteen seconds into the game, I irreparably screwed up the dish and experienced Mama’s “flame eyes.” Flame eyes were never formally defined in the instructions, but there was no doubt in my mind that I screwed up BIG. The next four tries, I continued to meet with those damn Cooking Mama flame eyes.

It made me realize it was time for an intervention with Queen Hadlifah’s clone, Gammy. Hey lady, pony up the cooking lessons or I’m gonna sic Ol’ Flame Eyes on ya! I better see a bowl of potato salad by spring or I’m squealing to GG.