WWCD?

Hola, Wild Boy friends, family and followers! Welcome back to another super exciting update from La Casa de Testosterone.  We are neck deep in baseball season and all the exhaustion that accompanies it (also, one emergency dental visit and one emergency room trip for xrays, so hopefully both Wild Boys have now established that we catch with our glove and hit with the bat...) The weather continues to vacillate between delightfully sunburnish and freak snowstormish, and my patience has been worn as thin as the toilet paper in the public restrooms at each ball park.  Know who is handling it like a champ, though?  The cop. He's so cool. He's a borderline saint. Look at how cute he is with these little howler monkeys:

I want to be like him one day, for reals. Know what's equally amazing? He puts up with my borderline insanity on a daily basis. I'm working on self improvement, and I'm pretty sure I need a little bracelet with WWCD (what would the cop do) to keep me somewhat in check.

The way I see it there is something of a spectrum of motherhood types. There are the Donna Reed mom's, who somehow manage to keep an impeccable house, cook, volunteer at the schools and for all the extracurricular activities, and have wonderfully well behaved children.  On the opposite end of the spectrum is the Jemma Teller-Morrow moms, who attempt to curb the shenanigans of their biker gang children but typically end up causing as many problems as they try to prevent. Aaaaand I think we all know what end of the spectrum I fall on:

In truth, I'm never going to get even close to the Donna Reed end. But the cop is curbing some of my more outlandish Jemma tendencies. Like, every now and then in conversations with the Wild Boys:

Gav: "Well, John (real name changed to protect the "innocent") says I'm an idiot."

Me: "Excuse me?!: Well that kid is a little sh....(sharp look from the cop, immediately reminding me I'm dealing with a ten year old)...shortsighted in his analytical skills on this one kiddo... (eye roll from cop)."

Or:

Gabe: "They didn't want me in their group though."

Me: "Jerks. Nobody likes them anyhow. It'll be a miracle if they pass third grade. I'm not even sure they can read."

Gabe: "What?"

Cop: Steely look of shock and pleading

Me: "I said that's not very nice of them, is it kiddo..."

It's a work in progress. But I was pretty impressed with my restraint this past weekend. Saturday was about nine hours in the sun for baseball, and come Sunday morning I was moving about as smooth as the tin man before he's graced with the oil can due to a little sunscreen mishap. But even painful blistering doesn't absolve me from grocery shopping (because the Wild Boys eat constantly...like, maybe tapeworm involvement constantly, and nothing lasts more then 7 days in la Casa). So I plodded through the list that would feed a small nation for a month or the Wild Boys and their wild tapeworms for one week, and come the end of the store I added to the cart one small bottle of rum. I'd earned it, right? And I would totally be sharing with the cop, and it would undoubtedly last way longer than the gallon of milk slotted for decimation within 12 hours of my return home. I waited patiently through the painfully slow line, and when it was finally my turn I walked up to the register and was greeted by the teenage cashier who immediately said "Wow - you look like you're just done. I mean, your face...I can't tell if you're just really tired or what, but you don't look happy."

WWCD...deep breath, refrain from obscenity, smile and nod...as best you can with perpetual resting bitch face and a sunburn that makes your lips crack if they move in an upward direction...

And I pulled it off folks. I did not reduce her to crying. Props, right?

But then she knocked the bottle of rum off the conveyor belt. Where it promptly shattered, showering me with rum and glass shards all over my tomato red calves.  In itself, this party foul would allow for some kind of bitter retort on my part, but rather than just apologize the teeny bopper proceeded to rush over to start cleaning up and then super loudly say loads of fun, judgy things like "OH MY GOD, IT SMELLS SO BAD (insert dry heaving noises) WHY WOULD ANYONE EVERY DRINK THIS?" Then, to the rest of the line, and lines on both sides of us due to the volume and dramatics involved "I'M SO SORRY EVERYONE - I'M GOING TO HAVE TO CLOSE THIS LINE, I NEED TO TAKE A MINUTE TO GO PUKE IN THE BATHROOM AND GO OUTSIDE TO GET SOME AIR...I CAN'T EVEN HANDLE IT..."

I would be justified in saying something here. I know I would. But I didn't say a damn thing. The cop would be so proud -  I'm growing!

Of course, I may not have needed to actually say anything. Because when she finally looked at my face she froze entirely, finished cleaning, bagging, and loading my groceries with a barely perceptible tremble in her hands and not another word. Sometimes my inner Jemma escapes via facial expression. I can't be held responsible for that though, right? Right???

Sigh. I want to say I'm going to work on that. But somehow I feel like the ability to make people cry with a single look may come in handy as the wild boys get closer to dating age. So maybe I'll just hang on to that a little while later.

Until next time, I'll be trying to scale down the Jemma.