Angie Kinghorn

Will you accept this rose? Hell, no.

Image courtesy of ABC
Things I know for sure about The Bachelor: it is a vicious cycle of addiction.  It disgusts me, yet I will watch it.  There will be hot tubs and pools at every opportunity.  No matter what the job listed below each contestant’s name, if you dig deep enough, you’re likely to find that the real profession is “actress.”  
Each season, I vow to stay away from this train-wreck of a show.  And then I tell myself I’ll just watch the first episode, to remind myself how horrible it is.  It leaves me feeling hungover and in need of a shower, fighting the urge to run out wearing sandwich boards teaching the general population the proper usage of personal pronouns.
***Begin rant***
The continued butchering of personal pronouns on The Bachelor and The Bachelorette is so egregious that it cannot possibly have been accomplished by accident.  This particular franchise gets it wrong every single time, with the kind of deliberateness that makes the conspiracy theorist in me come out to play.  

I think ABC employs a grammar coach.  My guess is that said coach flunked out of an English program at a respectable school (or couldn’t get admitted to one in the first place) and decided to consult on The Bachelor to help the contestants clean up their language.  He or she then sits behind the scenes of each interview, waiting for the hapless contestant to stumble into the “me” or “I” dilemma.  Then the coach steers them directly into the wrong pronoun, but with confidence!  The audience is then treated to such gems as, “Today is all about Michelle and I.”  Or, “Brad and I’s relationship is really moving forward.”  Or, “Me and Ashley were horrified to find out we had the two-on-one date.”
People.  As one who loves the Queen’s English, I beg you, please, STOP.  I will give you some simple tips in a separate post to help you figure it out.  It’s not that difficult, I promise.
***End rant***
The second week of the show, I find myself watching even though I really don’t want to, because I’m convinced that this is the season that someone is going to blow this thing out of the water.  Surely this is the season where all of the bachelorettes will stomp out of the mansion, yelling at the cameras that this loser of a guy is not worth it, that they came here to find a husband, not a fame-whore, and that dammit, they’d like to have access to a newspaper or a book so they can do something with their free time other than sit around and ponder which of them is “there for the right reasons.”  (Here’s a hint about the answer: none.)  
Alternatively, I think that surely, this season, the Bachelor will attend one of the first few pre-rose ceremony cocktail parties, look around at the room packed with preening women squeezed into scraps of jewel-toned fabric, black holes smoldering out of each pan-caked face where eyes should be, over-processed hair teased over Bump-its where brains should be, and say, “Dammit, ABC!  I give you my life to fix up, you have an entire world of women from which to choose, and THIS is what you give me?”
It hasn’t happened yet.  But since it might happen next week, maybe I’ll watch.
You know, just in case.

Wordless Wednesday: snow reading

Wordless Wednesdays are supposed to be, um, wordless.


Once again, I’m not so good with the rules.


Anyway, the sign above pretty much says it all, but I’m going to add my two cents anyway.  Since we are fortunate enough to be living in a place where today’s high hit 60 degrees, I have no right to be bitching about the snowpocalypse that has much of the nation in its grasp.


So I’m bitching on behalf of my friends elsewhere.  You should meet some of them.  They’re very funny and intelligent, these women.  Even while struggling with stir-crazy children, blocked driveways, icy sidewalks, and (in some cases) lack of storm-meat.  (See The Martha Project for explanation.) 


We were there, in the wake of a snowstorm, a few weeks ago, and “not fun” would be the understatement of the century.  Two small children cooped up inside for a week turns this Mommy into a stark-raving-nutjob.  I was ready to throw myself upon anyone capable of linear conversation with multisyllabic words.


So what did I do?  I read while they played.  My reading was mostly blog posts, since I have been horrendously behind and my beloved Kindle DX has been on the fritz (more about that later).  I found some fabulous (and useful!) stuff.


For instance, I almost took my friend Lori’s advice on how to sell your children to the gypsies.  And once things were sufficiently cluttered and dirty, I contemplated talking a page from Tina at Life Without Pink, and actually cleaning with my kids.


Y’all, calm down.  I said contemplated.  That’s as far as it went.


Then I read some more blog posts.  Like this one, from my friend Law Momma, about the inherent incompatibility of mothering and the billable hour.  And another, from Babble, titled “Does my Cesarean really count as ‘giving birth?'”  


So if you find yourself snowbound in the wake of the monster storm, here at least is some fun reading material.


Let me know what you think.


Oh, and by the way?  In my book?  A C-section definitely counts as having given birth.  





Deep Thoughts, by The Princess

As any parent can tell you, deep thoughts and existential questions from your children appear at the most ordinary and unexpected times.  Both of my children tend to ask questions about religion and death while on the toilet, for instance.
Tonight, I was putting my daughter to bed, and after our prayers were done, she called me back into the room.  I expected she’d need another sip of water, or a hug, but instead, she had a question.
“Mommy, are we real?” she asked.  Her little brow was furrowed under her bangs, a stuffed kitten hugged tight under her chin.  I sat down on the edge of the bed, thinking hard about how to answer her and get downstairs as quickly as possible.  The Princess is brilliant when it comes to drawing out bedtime, and she can smell a platitude a mile away.
“Well, honey, that’s a big question.  A lot of people would give you different answers.  But I’m going to give you an answer from a man named Descartes.  Yes, we are real.”
“Why?”
“Because we think.  He said, ‘I think, therefore I am.’  There you go.”  I stood, smoothed the comforter, and kissed the top of her still puzzled head.  “Goodnight.”
“But Mommy, I’m not done talking yet.”
“That’s ok.  You can keep talking to God as long as you’d like.”
“How?”
“By praying, sweetie.  Goodnight.”
So my four year old daughter is upstairs, either pondering her existence, Mommy’s sanity, or (hopefully) sleeping.

I do not negotiate with terrorists

Our twins were our first (and only) children, so I didn’t go into twin motherhood with any particular expectations of what it would look like.  Certainly not beyond the logistical stage of how to feed and diaper two infants at once.
Four years later, we have a set of inseparable children.  Our son and daughter are always together, the best of friends, quick to ire, yet utterly devoted to each other no matter what.  They’re kind of like a little old married couple.
A little old married couple plotting to overthrow the government.
During my pregnancy, we laughed at ultrasound pictures showing their little heads together.  I distinctly remember Hubster saying, “Look, they’re already conspiring against us!”  
People, God most definitely has a sense of humor.  
I am mothering in the trenches, y’all. Not to say this is Iwo Jima or anything, but it’s not for the faint of heart.  Especially when your twins learned to plot in the womb, make a practice of rescuing each other from time-out, and can defeat any deadbolt or childproofing device known to man by the age of four.  That package they ordered from Amazon the other day?  Definitely their first set of lock picks.
After preschool the other day, I let the kids have a (long) romp on the playground with their friends.  The usual routine is to go home after that and put them down for a nap.  As we were getting strapped into car seats, pouring sand out of shoes, and taking entirely too long to board the van and leave for home, my son piped up, “Mommy?  Can we watch Max and Ruby?”
[Max and Ruby are a pair of bunny siblings with their own show on Nick Jr.  Each show consists of Max repeating a single word over and over, while Ruby does her best to ignore them so she can have the perfect tea party.  Their parents have never been seen; no doubt because they’ve fled the state, leaving them in the custody of one ditzy grandmother with a spotty attendance record.  It is about as grating as Elmo.  Plus Barney.  Times the Teletubbies.]
At first, I was wonderfully patient, explaining to my kids that no, we could not watch Max and Ruby.  We had to go home and take a nap.  Why?  Because they were tired.  Yes, they really were, even if they didn’t feel like it.  And no, we couldn’t watch even one episode before the nap.  Why?  Because I said so.
On our way home, we passed a toy store, prompting my son to announce that, “next time, we can go in the toy store and you can buy me a new toy to play with, Mommy.”
Instead of snapping, “We just celebrated the birth of Christ by buying you an insane amount of trains and tracks.  No way are you getting near a toy store,” I calmly said, “I do not negotiate with terrorists.” 
Not that this stopped my son.  “But WHY, Mommy, why?!?” 
“It’s simply good foreign policy. Now stop trying to negotiate.”
Then we passed Chick Fil-A.  “Mommy, can we have a milkshape?”
“No.  And it’s ‘k.’  Milkshake.”
“But we haven’t had one yet,” he whined.
“Mommy, I be good,” my daughter chimed in.  “I wanna milkshake, too.”
“You just had lunch.”
“But Mommy!” my son pleaded.  “God told me I could have a milkshape.”
“Me, too!  He told me, too!” his sister echoed.
Oh, he did, did he?
“Well, far be it from me to contradict the Almighty, but I’m pretty sure he meant y’all could have a milkshake one day when your Mommy said you could,” I said. 
[In unison] “But Mommy!”
“I do not negotiate with terrorists,” I said.  “So BE QUIET.”
There was a pause, and in the rear view mirror, I saw them looking at each other, clearly confused.
“Why, Mommy?”
“Like I said, it’s just good foreign policy.  You’ll learn all about it in history class.  Now, who wants to listen to Vanilla Ice?”
Who knew Political Science would come in so handy for child rearing?  Had I realized, I would’ve switched majors.