I'm Telling You for the Last Time....Your Mother Knows What She is Talking About!!!!!!!!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

I just got off the phone with my daughter in Oregon and somehow, the topic got around to our dogs.  My daughter does not like me to give her any advice when it comes to her dogs and if I mention that I learned it on DoodleKisses, it just starts trouble.  Why I don’t learn to keep my mouth shut might be a whole other blog, but tonight when she said they might have to switch her dog’s food due to allergies, I did it again and offered her some advice.  Basically, both my kids think I know very little beyond the names of all the characters on Everybody Loves Raymond, and when they were younger I encouraged this behavior because I did not want to help with homework.  Sometimes, I pretended that I had no idea what they were talking about and as they got older and the homework harder, I didn’t even have to pretend. Usually, they didn’t even bother asking me to help and instead would say, “You won’t know. We will wait until dad gets home,” and I was glad. I hated homework when I was young, and hated it as a parent, and if it took my kids thinking I was stupid to get me out of it, so be it.  I didn’t care and whenever they forgot and asked me to help, I would just say something like, “Look at me.  I am 37 years old and have never needed to know any of this stuff.”  They never acted that impressed with that information and once, my oldest daughter said, “Mom, I will be sure and tell my teacher that a woman with her shirt on inside out said we don’t need to know English.”  Just to be sure she didn’t bother me again, I added, “Sounds good, honey, and be sure and tell that there teacher lady I brung you up real good and just because I get lickered up every mornin’ don’t mean my yungins kain’t talk real purty.”

 

I don’t know if this method of “Reverse Psychology” made my kids determined to learn everything they could because they loved learning or because they didn’t want to end up like me, but both of them were good students.  I tried to encourage them to broaden their horizons and play sports because I liked to go to sporting events, but instead my oldest daughter got involved in a group called Odyssey of the Mind, or as I liked to call it, Odyssey of the Who Gives a Crap about any of this Stuff.  She would tell you she liked this group, but I think the only reason she joined each year was because she liked to see my horrified reaction upon hearing I had to sit through more of these competitions. Year after year, I tried to be supportive of her desire to be in this group, but after sitting through eight hours of watching her team trying to perform some mindless experiment that involved a toy car and kids dressed up as fire, I turned to my engineer husband one year and said, “are we in hell?”  He answered back that he wished he had brought a bottle of wine in a paper bag and conducted a disappearing experiment of his own.

 

Well, I guess I played my part too well when they were growing up because now I feel like I am Martin Crane, the father of Frasier and Niles, on the show Frasier.  Just like Martin, I have two daughters who now think I know nothing. 

Just last week, we went to our favorite restaurant that has these cool placemats with puzzles on the back and I had just finished saying, “This maze is super hard. I’ve had to back up and start again twice,” when my youngest daughter turned to my husband and said, “Dad, have you ever been to a Renoir exhibit?” like I wasn’t even sitting at the same table now working on the dot to dot picture.  The two of them went on and on discussing Renoir and acting like I wouldn’t have a clue who he was, so I got mad and said, “Did he paint those funny pictures of the dogs playing poker or is he the one that painted the old lady with the doily on her head whistling?” 

Sure enough, they stopped talking about Renoir and we were able to get in one game of Hangman before the food was served.

 

The youngest daughter is nothing compared to her oldest sister.  This daughter has her PhD and I am convinced the only reason she got that degree is so she can say to me, “Mom, tell me again what your degree is in,” when I try and tell her something. She likes to send us emails with long intellectual articles attached for our reading pleasure and then she wants to know our opinions on the subject matter and believe me, she does not think it is funny when you say, “My opinion is a sleeping pill would have been quicker and less painful.”  Sometimes, she will add a note like, “have dad explain this to you,” and once I said, “could you just send me the Cliffs Notes next time or feel free to cut me out of the loop,” and she got mad.  She said she shouldn’t be surprised by my attitude and I probably thought the book The Grapes of Wrath was a story about a group of indignant California Raisins. 

If she hadn’t been so worked up, I would have asked her what a grape had to do with a raisin, but sometimes a mother has to know when to keep her mouth shut.

 

Unfortunately, when she called tonight, I didn’t keep my mouth shut and started to tell her not to let the vet talk her into any of their overpriced garbage foods and went on to tell her everything I know about dog allergies.  Right away, she said she had not called for my advice and we started to fight and I tried to explain to her that all those years of pretending I didn’t know anything was just a ruse to get out of doing homework and she said, “sure, Meryl Streep.”  The conversation quickly deteriorated into some name-calling.  She said DoodleKisses made me insane and I was a know-it-all and I asked her if PhD stood for Pig headed dumbass and she told me to apologize and I said, “I am sorry,” and then she said she heard me say, “my daughter is a pig headed dumbass,” under my breath and I didn’t deny saying it and then she asked to speak to her father.  So, I held the phone out to him and whispered, “you had better stick up for me and tell her I am not insane,” and then I made a slicing movement across my neck and pointed to him and he took the phone.

Well, she must have asked him where I got my degree from, because I heard him whisper, “Tweedle and Dum University,” and then I could tell they were laughing in a co-conspirator, annoying kind of way. 

After they had their fun, he handed me back the phone, even though I said I was done talking to people who did not think I had any sense and then I saw him high five my other daughter.  Whatever!  My daughter and I said our goodbyes, but not before she added that almost everyone, except my dogs and the crazy people on DoodleKisses, think I am nuts.  When I said I was going to write a blog to let them know a non-believer was amongst us who does not want our advice and thinks her vet is the be all and end all of dog knowledge, she threatened to write a point for point rebuttal and take as many liberties with her rebuttal as she says I do.  Consider yourself warned.  She is armed with a degree and extremely dangerous.

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Janie, Finally...a kindred spirit :) LOL Thank you!

[Janie, Jackson and Jilly]

Love this Laurie! LOL I would like nothing more than to sit in the restaurant with you and work my pencil back up the maze until we got it right! 

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Nancy, LOL

Donna, I can't wait for that day :) Although, she is so much like me now, she can't even deny it...LOL!!

J, Don't even get me started on wedding stuff. I wrote a blog about that one, too. If I find it, I will send it to you...LOL!!

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

Well, Bonnie, I had to.  MY friends kept telling me how funny and witty her posts were - but it is always presented with such a slant = perhaps I should join Laurie's mom and daughter .......

[Donna K & Quincy]

 Why is it that our children think they are so much smarter than we are? I told you so, I wasn't just saying that so I could hear myself talking. This was my reply when I had given my son advice that he didn't take but wished he had. I wish I had been dumb smart enough to get myself out of homework but DH played that card too well. Just look forward to the day when DD has children and she suddenly hears herself saying all the things she's once heard you say. The look on her face when she realizes, OMG, I sound just like my mother, priceless.

[J and Riley (and Luna)]

Great read :)

I'm on the other side of the mom-daughter relationship (for now...).  Luckily we don't have any of these "intellectual" spats - our educational backgrounds are actually pretty similar (we even went to the same university for at least 1 degree).  However...don't get me started on the differences of opinion that have come up lately about my impending wedding!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

F, Tell us something we don't know....LOL:)

Joanne, No wonder you liked OOTM. I would have loved it IF I didn't have to go :) Love, Sucka

[Joanne ~ Spud*]

Ha. I never had to go. Just had to go to the events.  Can you say, Sucka?  LOL

[F, Calla & Luca]

My mind is often on an odyssey but unfortunately it usually doesn't know where it is going.

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Joanne, Now it all makes so much more sense :) Actually, my DD stuck with OOTM for two or three years and I still say it was because she loved that I had to go, too :)