Catch it on Parenting OC newsstands or right here…

http://www.parentingoc.com/sugarmama_0908.html

Did I mention that my best friend moved away this month? To Oregon? Or that my sunroof broke on my car? I focus on the roof thing, of course, simply to quell my abandonment issues – kind of like that ball and the cups thing. Here’s my sorrow, like a little ball under this cup, and now watch how I move it really fast next to all these other cups and try and find it again. Well, chances are that I won’t find it because I dizzy easily, and it’s not like I can concentrate anyway. (We’ve been best friends for 20 years, for God sakes!) Instead, I’ll pick the wrong cup with some other issue under it.

We’ll call this one my car issue.

I’ve had the same Volvo since my oldest (now 7) was an infant. It was two years old when I bought it, I think - clean, fast and wagon-y. Fast-forward 100,000 miles or so, and you’ll find a few dents, a crack in the window and several lights on the dash, telling me to service this, service that…whine, whine, whine. But like a good mother, I can tune that out. Until my sunroof broke this weekend – open. Now, as a 38-year-old woman who can easily pass for 50, the last thing I need is a bunch of UV punks attacking my face so I told Joe we needed to fix it.

“No. No more money into that car.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

“I’ll rig something, like a hefty bag over the top.”

Excuse me? But he has me exactly where he wants me. It’s time for a new car – it has been for a year – and we can’t agree on what kind.

“Mercedes or BMW?” I asked him one night, when my car first started to fall apart.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No.” But I want to be kidding. I miss that girl he married, too – that one in the Birkenstocks who drove a truck with a stick shift? She was awesome. But she was also poor, spinster-ish and had no idea that butter was fattening. Kind of a Pollyanna, in retrospect.

Anyway, the compromise Joe offered that night was a “tricked out van.”

“But I don’t want tricks!” I told him. “I want a luxury car that makes me look wildly successful and amazing!”

“That’s disgusting.”

And hefty bag on top of my car is…what, exactly?

So I’m back to my ball with all the cups…which one will I choose? The stubborn one with the hefty bag? The sensible one with the van?

Or perhaps the one who simply misses her friend and should probably fly anyway.

My hunch tells me that you’re sick of reading about Michael Jackson’s death – call it my razor-sharp mother’s instinct. But somehow this one little MJ tidbit eluded the media and I found it relevant to share. Well, relevant is sort of a strong word for it. Let’s call it self-serving.

I’ll quickly flash to a month ago when I received the news via text while picking my kids up from camp that Michael had passed. I looked down at my phone, dropped my kids’ tennis rackets and cried. When my kids eventually got around to asking me what was wrong, I told them the truth - someone had died. Someone who was a big part of my life growing up.

“Like a teacher?” they asked.

“No.”

“A friend?”

“No.”

More like a backdrop to all the milestones in my life, I told them. A beat, like a heart, had gone silent today. My kids – used to my crystal clear metaphors – began to nod in feigned understanding and pretended to care as they do so well. So when the radio stations dedicated a full weekend to pay tribute to Michael, I made them listen. At the end of the weekend, we went to a friend’s house for drinks when a cover of Billie Jean came on. It wasn’t Michael, but my son Jackson recognized the song and told my friend’s daughter that he was named after him. “He was someone that my mom loved so much she wanted me to have his name.”

“God, is that true?!” my friend asked. Honestly, no. But in those brief Perseco-filled moments I was overcome with the honor that Jackson had just bestowed upon himself…adopting a legacy of someone he thought was special enough to make me drop tennis rackets and cry.

“Yes.” I answered. “Yes it is.”

“That whole child molestation thing hadn’t happened yet, I guess?” She asked with one eyebrow directed at the ceiling fan. Geez, what about that whole child molestation thing? Was Michael now somehow less of an impact on my life? Was there a decrease in his genius that fateful night(s) in Neverland? I don’t discount the issue, but it wasn’t my issue. Kind of like Richard Gere’s gerbil incident – I prickle, but I wasn’t there.

So my six-year-old now thinks he’s named after the king of pop who is also known as a child molester when really there was a golden retriever in the neighborhood named Jackson and we liked the name. I can live with that. Because my guess is that when MJ’s spirit looks down on my son at night, admiring his glow in-the-dark skin, our sleeping cat on his pillow, his two smelly crabs against his wall (sorry, one) and skateboard stickers stuck to his door, Michael, too, feels honored.

Honored to become the boy he never came to be.

I’m prefacing this post with the clarification that I wear an IUD. For those of you who are male - first, I love you for reading this blog. (And, yes, I’m hitting on you.) Second, it means that I have no period, blowing your inevitable ‘hormonal’ theory to bits.

Regardless, CAUTION: ZINGERS AHEAD.

You should know that I make a living by writing for famous people and have for several years. This simply means that I take what people say to me and clean it up to make relevant to you. These could in the form of blogs, commercials, speeches…even toasts. This by no means discounts everything you read – quite the contrary. It simply means that famous people are just like us – vulnerable and worried about what people think.

I bring this up because my least famous celebrity, Sugar Mama, has hit a dead end. This was inevitable because she is a fantasy, and fantasies - as you all know - usually end in some dragon slaying a unicorn. Sure, I use my kids’ real names, I recount their real experiences, and I publically humiliate my husband for his real-life deformed toe, but my hiLARious approach to making a blue mom moment sparkle? My PISHAW attitude toward parenting a tad…differently?

It’s bullshit.

The truth is, every day as a parent is a challenge for me, my maternal gut is usually wrong, and my youngest still paints his toenails. This, from a parenting expert who is regularly quoted and just as frequently awarded for being “On the mark!” “Spoken like a true pro!” “Straight from the frontlines of parenting!”

AAAAH….but back to my dead end.

Two years ago I hired myself (Cynthia) to write for myself (Sugar Mama) about myself (Cynthia) from a perspective (Sugar Mama’s) that was marketable and advertiser-friendly. But you know what? Sugar Mama is starting to bug. She’s like that popular girl in high school who you fantasize about sabotaging with floating maxi-pads in her pool. Kind of like the girl from Sixteen Candles in the lavender dress - Jake’s girl. Well, it’s time to cut Sugar Mama’s hair off, too, my friends. You know why? Because thinking your son may be gay isn’t funny. It’s a lot of things, but it’s not funny. Nor is cleaning up kid barf from my new laptop my raison d’etre. That, my friends, is a shit sandwich.

But firing myself would blow my chances for entering the Guinness Book of World Records for never having been fired (true story.) Side note: In 1980, my brothers and I built what we thought was the biggest raft EVER made out of milk cartons and we were denied. That kind of blow turns into hours on the couch and, at this point in my life, I have no time for therapy – not when I’m trying to reinvent myself. I’m sorry, reintroduce myself.

So hello. My name is Cynthia, but I’m called Sugar Mama simply because it makes a better t-shirt. I cuss, I fail, I hate, and I feed my kids strawberries and peanut butter in the emergency room parking lot in case they’re allergic. So I guess that  means I can multi-task too.

I am grateful for the fan mail to date – and even the hate mail – and hope to continue to entertain you as Sugar Mama, Cynthia, that lady from the ER parking lot…whatever you want to call me from this point forward. But today’s the day this dragon slays that pansy unicorn, readers.

RIP and I hope you’ll enjoy the fire.

I was driving my sons to tennis camp this morning, happily blaring my radio, when my oldest interrupted me to tell me that he knew how giraffes were born.

How? I asked, begrudgingly turning down my music.

The mom lifts her tail she poops it out.

Oh.

Well, am I right?

Sort of, yes.

Don’t you think that’s gross?

Not half as gross as how you were born.

Did you poop me out?

No, my mid-section was cut open and all of my organs were placed on a table while the doctor fished around a bunch of blood and goop until she got a hold of your arm and yanked you out.

Oh.

Can I turn the music back on now?

Uh, sure.

So terribly wrong, I know. And so scarring. But Guns ‘n Roses was on – I really had no other choice.

(other than the obvious…)

Is when you can sneak out of your ‘crying-so-hard-he’s-about-to-vomit’ son’s tennis camp unseen by walking out/hiding behind someone larger than you. I’m just saying…had that guy not been a fan of all things caloric, I’d still be there trying to bribe Benji to stay.

Sorry, sweetpea– but mama had hair to be lasered meetings today.

We’ve returned from two weeks on the road through five, sparsely populated states. I’d list them here but then you’ll think I’m either Mormon or a hippie – neither of which are true.

Well, one of them is, after bearing two kids and all.

Regardless, I’m back no more rested than when I left for two reasons:

A) I made a pact with my husband that we would consume NO FAST FOOD on our trip. So what’s the point of a road trip without fries, you ask? Well, there isn’t one, which agitated me before we even left the driveway;

B) I obsessed over the drawer next to my bed containing a few “unmentionables” which I was certain our house-sitters would find.

“What unmentionables?” Joe asked, after I screamed in a panic just before Vegas (not Mormon…) that I forgot to hide them.

“Stuff. Like, embarrassing stuff.”

“Well, how come I don’t know about them?”

“Because they’re too embarrassing.”

“For you or for me?”

“I don’t know – for both.  ‘Rainy day’ things…”

“See-through galoshes?” Joe joked.

“I’m not talking to you.”

“An umbrella with batteries?”

“I’m moving out.”

“A movie called Slippery When Wet?”

Pause

“Think we should turn around?” Joe asked.

And this was how we spent our two weeks – trying not to mention the unmentionables…We’ll see if our house-sitters do the same.

http://www.parentingoc.com/sugarmama_0907.html

As hard as I try, I’m never going to be that mom. That mom who every kid loves - who always has the right snacks.

Instead I’m the mom who makes you sit down at the dinner table to eat. Or quizzes you on the state capitals in the car even though you’re only four. “Quirky,” is what another mom called me one time. Yeah, but not in a good way, I thought to myself.

I try, sometimes, to quote High School Musical, or to put cool stickers on my door in order to fit in. I even learned what Tony Hawk’s favorite cereal was and bought it for my kids.

“You’re still lame.” Jackson informed me. “And I still want to sleep at Luke’s house.

So what is it? What does Luke’s mom have that I don’t? Because the truth is, I never changed when I had kids. I kept waiting for that “mom” gene to kick in after I gave birth - the one that makes you pretend to lose at Connect Four in order to boost your kids’ self esteem. Or the one that plays airplane with a spoon directing pureed pea mush into your kid’s mouth.

Well, it never happened.

I was lamenting to Joe about this tonight - how I wish I were more like “that mom” and less like me. And he said, “Nonsense.”

That was it. Nonsence. Which, in my house, is code for “I’m not listening to you because I’m trying tor read the paper.” Well, no one listens to me. Ever. In fact, as I sit here at 2 in the morning, removing a flip-flop from the refrigerator, I can’t help but think that despite all of my “quirky” rules (one being NO FLIP FLOPS IN THE REFRIGERATOR) no one listens to me anyway.

Which, perhaps, makes me like every other mom after all.

I like everything about pool parties except for the pool part. People drown in them, kids pee around them, and over-uterused moms like myself look awful dressing for them. But the ‘party’ part I do like so when we were invited to one this weekend I said, “Sure…lemme grab my thong.”

Having both of my kids of swimming age for the first summer in, well, ever, I was able to enjoy all things pool party this time, minus the pool. (For those of you not familiar with the concept – or missed hearing about Tommy Lee’s disastrous pool party for his son a few years ago - this simply means standing a mere three inches from the pool’s edge, poised for a rescue, sober.) But the music was pumping, the tacos were en fuego and I was, despite being a tad keg-parched, having a good time.

Until the kids moved into the Jacuzzi.

Now, when adults move into a Jacuzzi it’s usually for hot, sexy things - or at least for a relaxing, post-ski soak. But for kids*, Jacuzzi’s simply provide fodder for terrible behavior. It’s like they think they’re protected by some invisible ring, or something, and we can’t see, hear or smell them. (As if we hadn’t already tested that during our own Jacuzzi days…) So before I could even shift my ready-to-jump-in-at-any-second feet toward the jets, Benji was already out, running toward me with trouble all over his face.

“Mom, Jackson said the H-word!”

The h-word, the h-word…

”Jackson said Hell?”

“NO. The H-word.”

“Hiccup? How are ya?” I asked him. “Help me out here.”

“He said FUCK.” Benji announced to the party.

All eyes were on me now, so I knew I had to nip this language problem in the bud pretty quickly.

“But that doesn’t start with an h,” I told him, loud enough for people to hear. “Fuck’ starts with an f.”

The eyes, the eyes…still on me.

Benji immediately started to cry and make a scene. “Yes, ‘fuck’ does start with an h! You’re stupid! I hate you! (Now there’s an h-word, honey…) You’re not my friend!” And then he ran, teary-eyed, back into the Jacuzzi.

Nobody blinked, which I took as shared horror in my dilemma. So I raised my non-alcoholic beverage toward the crowd and asked them for a little insight.

“What the fuck is that pre-school teaching Benji, anyway? I mean, come on…an h?”

God, I love pool parties.

*Mine