The Fish that Got Away

I'm not the type of parent who micro-manages.  I know too many parents who are constantly in their childrens' faces, managing every second of their day, obsessing about their appearance, and making every decision their child needs to make.  I take more of a laid-back approach, allowing my children to make choices - sometimes the wrong ones - so they can learn and grow.

The same is true for projects.  With three children, one in his senior year, I've seen my fair share of projects.  I don't micro-manage school projects either.  I'll help with ideas, buy supplies, help with research, if asked, but I don't take over the project and the ultimate product - good or bad - is up to the child.  I can't tell you how many times I have seen other children's projects - especially for science fairs - where it is 100% obvious that the parent did most, if not all of the work.  That annoys me to no end!

So now take everything I've said above and apply it to projects that involve artwork and twist it inside out and backwards and throw it in the trash.

I LOVE ART PROJECTS.  Unfortunately my children did not inherit that gene.

A few weeks ago, The Crazy Clown brought home an art project where he had to research the history of mandalas.  He had to come up with a theme for a mandala, look at examples, plan and draw a mandala, color it, write an essay about it, and present it to the class.

As soon as I saw the paperwork, I immediately got out my mandala drawing book because I have one and I am a geek like that.  Long story short:

Instead of "helping" my child, I became a complete control freak, monster parent who obsessed over the project and did the ENTIRE thing. (He chose the fish/ocean theme). 

The Crazy Clown: "Wow, Mom.  That is freaking awesome!
It's so awesome that if I turn it in, I will definitely get a F.
  My teacher knows I could never do anything like that!"

So yeah.  NO restraint when it comes to art projects.

The Crazy Clown ended up creating his own mandala.  He traced a dinner plate for the outside circle and traced a coffee mug for the inner circle.  The mug handle made the circle warped, but apparently that was ok with him.  He used a crappy blue Crayola marker to color some water and used an orange marker to make dots to represent fish.  I pretty much kicked his ass in mandala drawing.

Since you're begging, I'll post one more picture of my beautiful artwork, but then I have to go get started on the clay pot for the Ancient Islamic Artwork project.  It's due on Friday and I'm running out of time!

Can you get herpes at the grocery store?

This is the white board I keep on the side of the fridge.  When someone in our family needs something, they write it on the board.

Score: paper towels: 3, jelly: 3, glass cleaner: 2, herpes: 1

I have Cinematic Dyslexia

I'll confess.  I'm not even sure if Cinematic Dyslexia exists, but it totally should because I have it.

Last night I told my husband I wanted to watch a movie, but I couldn't remember a single detail about it.  "I can't remember the name of the movie or who is in it, but the cover has a picture of a boy on the front".  He had no idea what I meant.  He sucks.  
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477302/

I often describe movies like this, "We should watch that funny movie we watched that one time that had that guy from the doctor show and that girl that you saw at Harvard once and it's about weird people in New York."   
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0333766/

I also completely confuse names of actors and actresses.  "We should watch that movie with Will Farrell and Jennifer Aniston.  I think it was called Spotless Sunshine". 
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338013/

I often confuse two actors on a consistent basis.  Morgan Freeman was awesome in Jurassic Park.  Samuel L Jackson is the voice of God in all those Will Farrell movies.  One of them is in the Die Hard movies, but I have no clue which one. The other guy in the Die Hard movies was really awesome in Sixth Sense, but I didn't like him in Cheers.

And sometimes I'm really amazed at the connections I make.  We were watching that movie where that really tall guy who sings funny songs and plays with puppets was in Hawaii trying to get his girlfriend back and that girl who worked at the hotel had the exact same voice as the girl from Family Guy! And I seriously can't even give you a IMDB link for that movie.  I'm sure the movie is called "Saving Sarah Marshall" and the only thing coming up is "Saving Silverman".  I've never seen that movie, but I do see that Jack Black is in it.  I'm not a fan of his, but I did like his version of Gulliver's Travels with that girl who was in that tv show about a tv studio.  She was also a dental hygenist con artist in that movie with the guy from Friends and the guy from the Die Hard movies. So hey - Six Degrees of Separation with the paragraph above.  Yeah, me!

My husband was watching that Fox show where the entire season is 24 hours long and I couldn't believe how much that guy looked like the guy in the original MASH movie.  Turns out they're father and son!  Yeah me, again!

I also can't watch certain movies because I fixate on something about the actor.  I've tried to watch Lord of the Rings a million times, but I fixate on that short, pudgy dude.  I know he is the son of Patty Duke and every time I see him my mind plays this on a continuous loop:

"Yes, they're cousins, identical cousins and you'll find...They laugh alike, they walk alike, at times they even talk alike..."

And then I get angry because Patty and Kathy didn't walk or talk alike and anyone who thought they did, obviously was not paying attention!

Then I remind myself that I'm watching Lord of the Rings and I should pay attention to the movie, but then I think about Gandolf and he reminds me of Gargamel from the Smurfs and I wonder what ever happened to all those little rubbery Smurf figurines I had when I was a child.  My brother used a Sharpie to color Smurfette's bra-top red and I was soooo mad at him!

Then I remind myself that I'm watching Lord of the Rings and I should pay attention to the movie.  When the short, pudgy dude comes on the screen again, I wonder how he can be so short and pudgy.  I know Patty Duke used to be married to John Astin and I think that John Astin is the short, pudgy dude's father.  How the hell can he be so short and pudgy when Herman Munster was so tall?

So I think they need to develop a test for Cinematic Dyslexia.  I should call Conan O'Brien and see if he will do a segment on it.  CNN often does health-related stories and they could put it on his 360 degrees show.