impatientchick.com

I haven’t been to my own blog in months! MONTHS! I’ve been busy in a good way. A little UCB sketch comedy writing here. A little writing for a Nickelodeon show called HOW TO ROCK that you should watch Saturdays at 830 PST there. And a little mommying.

Always with the mommying.

Things are good! Raegan and I (for those of you who have been so kind as to follow our exploits) have moved out of my mom’s house and into our own house. Great news! One thing I realize right off the bat: I am much cooler living on my own.

Seriously. I do such cool stuff! I walk to places to eat. Like I’m in a regular TV show! I’m all like, “Oh, I’m hungry. I’m gonna walk up the street and sit in a place and eat and then walk home.” Also, I drink wine while I make dinner. Which I’ve always done but some how it feels cooler doing it in my own house. Oh, another thing I do. REUPHOLSTER CHAIRS ya’ll. Three of em. I got up early, stapled some old ass Guess Jean curtains (that my mom inexplicably owned) to a shitty looking dining room chair seat and kept it moving. Kept it moving! I sit in the chairs! The ones I saved with my staple gun skills.

So apparently, on my own, I am a domestic Goddess. Raegan has her own room. Which I am very careful to remind her is actually MY room since I pay for it. Now, she SAID she has money to pay for it. But then she said she has three dollars. And that room costs more than three dollars. So I feel like I’m not really gonna honor her claim.

That’s the problem with kids, isn’t it? They have no perspective. Raegan told my niece that her late 90s model Toyota Camry (which I’m sure runs very well being a Toyota and all) is “very, very, very old” and that she should go get a “silver Lexus like we did.” First of all, “we” who? Cause I sure as hell don’t remember Raegan at anybody’s car dealership laying down some down payment dough. With her little punk ass three dollars (which, I’m telling you right now. She does not have it. I haven’t seen it. And if she did have it, I’d have been the one to give it to her, so who’s is it?)

Secondly, I’m glad that in her world one can just waltz into a dealership and get a car. And excuse my niece for driving a reliable automobile for as long as she can in our stressed out economic climate. This country is on thin ice! I bet Raegan’s not considering a little thing called a “recession” in her big fancy suggestions that one just replace their “very very very old car” with something new and shiny.

She has no idea what I had to do to get that shiny car she’s bragging about. NO IDEA! And what am I? Fancy Car Buying Lady of Fancy Car Buying-onia? No! My lease was up. Had to replace the car. Got a entry level Lexus hybrid because I got a good deal and it’s gas efficient. Oh, and what’s worse is that she says that the car is hers because she picked it out. Which I will give her credit for. But still man. Like, really? It’s YOURS? So by that logic if I pick out some shoes for a friend then I get to keep them? Or she wears them and I just arrogantly point out every time we’re hanging together that I am Shoe Picker Almighty and technically they’re my shoes?

I’m just sayin’ Rae. Ya know? Damn!

I over heard her tell somebody, “This is my house”. But she said it while lounging back on the couch. Arms stretched across the back of the couch like a little Tony Montana. She said this to a grown person. Basically the tone I heard was, “Fuck you. this is MY house. Kick rocks”.

I said, “WHAT?! Oh no. This is MY house, little girl. And you will not talk to an adult that way.” She immediately broke down (which I’m sure was embarrassing given the bravado she showed a mere few seconds ago), whining, “but Mommy, I picked it out.” There goes that “I picked it out so it’s mine” logic again. I explained that she did not. And even if she did, does she have the money to pay rent in this house? Of course she goes back this non-existent three dollars she has. Which, she has now managed to “spend” on her room, a car and, apparently, a house. Girl, is busting her ass to stretch a dollar.

Point is. We moved! Yay!

Keeping with my previous promise to update my blog with things I update my Facebook page with I’m giving you guys this little gem of a status update:

?”Nothing’s impopsicle!” – Raegan giving a motivational speech while craving a popsicle.

Raegan said this today after I promised her an orange juice popsicle. I was putting her shoes on after she lied said that she didn’t know how. She said she couldn’t do it and I told her she could. After I’d put them on she optimistically proclaimed, “Nothing’s impopsicle!”

She says stuff like this every day. She’s three years old now and knows it. (Trust me. I tried to get her to lie and say she was two so she could get in free at Universal Studios and my girl was NOT having it.) When I think about it, she’s become quite the little motivational speaker. Recently we had an orange juice debate. There was a mysterious cup of orange juice on the coffee table that I’d pegged as being old. I forbid her from drinking it. FORBID!

She swore the orange juice was fresh. After checking with my mother, the person who put the orange juice there in the first place, I discovered that the orange juice was fresh after all.

Here’s what happened next:

NANI: Nope, that’s new orange juice. I just put it there for Raegan.

RAEGAN “I TOLD YA SO” MITCHELL: See, Mommy! I told you that it wasn’t old! I told you! Sometimes you just have to take your chances!

ME: Shut up and leave me to my cynicism.

I didn’t say that. I wanted to. Damn, chipper, ultra positive munchkin. She has no perspective on the world, that’s her problem. Sure, to her, the world’s a bright place where orange juice just might be fresh and new and delicious. Let her live a few more years. By the age of 9 she’ll see the world for what it is. A place where ya just don’t know how old the orange juice is, where it came from, what it could be poisoned with or who’s trying to kill you over it.

I can’t wait till Raegan’s a nine year old looking over her shoulder for life to be shitty. THEN she’ll feel dumb for being so delightfully optimistic. And I’ll finally have the last laugh!

FINALLY!!

I’ve come to realize how irresponsible it is of me to start a blog, get ya’ll reading and then never check in.  The truth is that I update my Facebook with all the same stuff I’d usually tell you guys. But only because, as we’ve already established, I’m lazy and can basically just roll my lazy ass over to my phone and just type things with my thumbs. No need to open a computer, boot up, go online, log in to a thing and then click stuff. See all those steps? Way too much sometimes.  Also, when I started impatientchick I wasn’t really into the social networking thing.

I’m still not. (I’m talking to you, Twitter) I’ve been trying to figure out ways to have more efficient laziness. I was hoping that some how I could update my blog, facebook page, twitter and call my Uncle in Redding all in one pop. ( I really gotta check in with him more often). But this Internet machine continues to baffle me.

SOOOOO… from now on I’m just copy and paste my FB updates to impatientchick and then maybe, JUST MAYBE, it will encourage me to blog a little bit. Fingers crossed! I miss you guys!!

That being said, I just posted this:

“I snitched today you guys. Called the cops on who I thought was a drunk driver. I passed by the guy’s car feeling all heroic and saw that maybe he was just an Epileptic that was trying to be independent. Boy are the cops that pull him over gonna have egg on their face. Oh well. I went to Starbucks! YUM!”

I was such the Nervous Nelly on this one you guys. I have never snitched. I’ve never been the concerned citizen. But I was on the 10  FWY and this guy really was swerving all over the place. I heard myself say aloud, “Oh no! This guy is drunk! I’m gonna call the cops before he kills someone!” I’m such an adult, right? I feel like that statement makes me more of a TV adult and not a real life adult. Maybe about in my 50’s…

So I called 911. Which I have NEVER done. But there are lives at stake here, ya’ll. So it just so happened that the guy swerved his ass off the freeway at my off ramp. I crept up behind him and got his license plate. Told the dispatch. License plate number and make and model of the car. I am a hero.

HERO!

But then I’m driving past his car and he looks like a total Epileptic. I am an asshole.

I tried to tell the dispatch, “Hey, ya know what? Maybe he’s just Epileptic and was inadvisably driving himself.”

She goes, “Yeah, well I alerted a car in the area. They’ll handle it.”

UH OH.

I’m Black. So what that sounded like to me was, “It doesn’t matter. Some cops are gonna beat his ass and then figure it out later.”

I may have gotten a sick person beat up, you guys. Or just mildly harassed. Here I am doing my civic duty. Saving lives. LIVES! And I may have ratted out someone who’s super proud of being handi-capable. He left his house like, “I don’t care, Barbara. My disability doesn’t define me. I will DRIVE today. For the first time in 10 years. After 10 years of being dependent on the outside world. I will FINALLY do for myself. I will drive myself to my doctor’s appointment. And then one day, I will drive myself to my wedding. And my kid’s Little League game. And every other cherished event in my life that I thought I would never experience because the outside world wouldn’t let me do for myself. Today, my life belongs to me.”

Then he got his ass in a car. Swerved. Made me nervous. I called the cops and went to Starbucks.

My drink? Grande Soy Chai Tea Latte, no water, no foam, two pumps of vanilla.

I bet while I was on my way home, happily sipping my Chai, I drove past the poor guy being lit up with a police baton to the groin.

Tea was good though.

Hey guuuys!

Hope you’re all well. I’ve been crazy busy lately but in a good way. Just a lot of writing and working on fun little projects like my podcast! Which I will unveil soon enough. We’re still in the very beginning stages of getting things together and it sounds like shit right now because we’re literally hovering over a Macbook gabbing away. But I like Macs! And I like to gab, so I’m happy. Stop judging me!

Go to www.yamessica.com to see what my friend, Jessica Jardine, and I have been up to. Hope it doesn’t suck!

Also, I tell a really silly story about my mom bringing ANOTHER crazy dog into the house as a rescue. UGH! It’s gone now but for a good week this as even a bigger crazy house than ever before.

Don’t mind the pictures on the home page of the site. It was New Years and I was drunk. I was so damn happy to have my hammy ass in front of somebody’s camera that I damn near squeezed the life out of poor Jess.

We’re gonna take more pics later in which I’ll photoshop myself to look like Halle Berry.

xoxoxo

BYE!

Raegan and I were having a perfectly lovely afternoon. Reading a story, eating “pistachio peanuts” and just generally bonding. For about 20 minutes today, I was a super star. I was the most fun she’d ever known. I heard, “Mommy, you’re silly” when I told a funny joke. I got an impulsive, “Hey Mommy! I love you the planet!” Just on impulse. Just like that.

But then Nani walks in and Raegan shoots off like a rocket, leaving me sitting over my sad little plate of food in the kitchen, a story half read, what would have been the perfect-mom baked sweet potato in the oven…

We were going to snuggle after lunch. SNUGGLE!

Now? I’m invisible. Who needs Mommy when you have fun Nani? Nani paints her nails. I do too, sometimes. But does that matter? NOPE. Nani plays games and rolls on the floor and makes cookies for no reason at all.

I do none of that. So I guess that’s why Fun Nani reigns supreme. But so what. I may not be fun. (Although I know a man or two that would beg to differ. Am I right, ladies?! HOLLAAAA!) I may not do a picnic outside because once we do a picnic we have to ALWAYS do a picnic and mama has other shit to get done. And fine, I put the Playdoh away because who’s the one scraping it out of the carpet? Not Nani. That’s for sure. We aren’t collecting rocks because guess what gets left in her pockets and then accidentally washed in the washing machine, threatening to break the one desperately necessary appliance in the house?

As a parent it’s my responsibility to ensure Raegan’s engaging in activities that are fun yet responsible. That build life skills. Make her think. And it just so happens that those activities will not be anything that makes a mess that I will have to clean, everyday, by myself(!) while she’s skipping her ass on to the next fun mess making thing.

Fuck that.

Wanna bake cookies? Who’s washing the cookie sheet? OH, ME?!

Think again, sister.

Oh yes, painting our nails sounds like loads of fun. Guess what’s NOT fun? Paying a carpet cleaner to scrub the nail polish out my carpet.

Not happening.

I imagine making mud pies would be a blast! Seems lots more fun than spending the night scrubbing mud stains out of kids clothes and then cursing my bottle of Oxy Clean for not being more effective.

I want no part of it.

So, of course she wants to hang with Nani. And of course I feel guilty that I told her that they stopped manufacturing Play Doh just because I don’t feel like having to clean. But I’m just kinda like, “My uterus, my rules. You don’t live there any more but these stretch marks are ever lasting so I get to do what I want.”

My idea child would say: “Nani? Fuck that. Where’s MOMMY? She’s the one who did all the work.”

Raegan won’t ever say that. But then again, I won’t ever wash potatoes out of her hair after an especially messy food fight.

So, we’re even.

Boy am I a dud, right guys? I all but abandoned my little blog over here and for what? Because I got busy? Maybe. Because I’m lazy? Most likely. Because I’m awesome? ALWAYS.

I’ll post more, sheesh. And to prove it, watch this….

POST.

BOOM. You’re welcome America!

What a snide little fucker I am.

Because I’m ghetto I allowed Raegan to run through my neighbor’s sprinklers in her pajamas. She came in the house soaking wet. My mom laughed. I took Raegan into the bathroom to get her out of wet clothes, while my mom stayed in her bedroom.

Here’s the conversation that transpired between them:

MOM (yelling from the other room): Raegan, you should give your Mommy a big wet hug!
RAEGAN: WHAT?! A BREAKY BUG?!
MOM: No, a big wet hug!
RAEGAN: A BREAKY BUG?!
MOM: No! a big wet hug!
RAEGAN: WHAT?!
MOM: A BIG WET HUG!
RAEGAN: OH. OKAY!
(then, quietly to me)
RAEGAN: A breaky bug?

HA! Haven’t we all done this before? Pretended to hear something that we obviously couldn’t really hear just to avoid the awkwardness of saying, “huh?” again.

Here’s a quick tip regarding Receiving Blankets.

If you have a girl, keep ‘em. Later on, they’ll make great baby doll blankets.

Apparently, little girls like to put all their baby dolls to sleep simultaneously, making it look like one massive group suicide just took place in your baby’s bedroom.

So keep those blankets! Your kid has lots of murder/suicide scenes to recreate.

God help us all.

My mother is a terrible cook. Terrible. As an example, she once made a grape cake and added actual grapes. And then she baked it. And then she asked people to eat it.

She’s used soda pop in a recipe that asking for baking soda. She said, “well, I’m baking with the soda so it is baking soda!” BADUMBUM!

As a kid she used to tell us a story about a dragon who was killed because he was fed some of her rock hard biscuits, which made him sink to the bottom of the ocean. Those “rock hard biscuits” are NOT an exaggeration.

She makes disgusting versions of everything. And admittedly, she knows she can’t cook. Which is why she decided to set up a video camera in the kitchen and record herself cooking badly. Basically, my terrible cook of a mom decided to produce her own terrible cooking show in our kitchen.

Allow me to elaborate:

She set up a Sony DVD video camera, which she has no idea how to operate. She put it on a tri pod. Raegan sat in a chair next to her, feeding tortilla chips to the dog while my mother proceeded to make spaghetti.

Production value= 0

I was in the next room using the copier. My mother is very much into administrative work so she has a full sized, office copier in the dining room. I laugh about it but it does come in handy.

Anyway, mommy’s in the kitchen quietly chopping bell peppers and onions while Raegan feeds the dog chips. About five minutes go by and I realize how quiet it is, so I poke my head in.

ME: What are you doing?
MOM: Chopping onions and bell peppers
ME: Well aren’t you going to tell the camera what you’re doing?
MOM: It can see what I’m doing.
ME: Uh… what’s the point of having the camera on you if you’re not going to talk to it?
MOM: (sighs) Camera, I’m chopping onions and bell peppers.
RAEGAN: Who are you talking to Nani?
MOM: The camera.
RAEGAN: I wanna talk to the camera!
MOM: Camera, this is my granddaughter Raegan.
RAEGAN: I don’t wanna talk to the camera!
MOM: Then don’t talk.
RAEGAN: I want chips!
MOM: Then eat some chips.
RAEGAN: No!
ME: What a terrible cooking show.

I walk off. Continue my copying. And here’s what the rest of my mother’s “cooking show” sounded like:

MOM: So camera, now I’m putting this sauce in a pan. I ran out of spaghetti sauce so I’ll just enchilada sauce.
ME: (OFF CAMERA) There’s spaghetti sauce in the fridge!
MOM: Oh, my daughter said there’s sauce in the fridge. So I’ll just make two kinds of sauce and everyone can pick what they want. Hey, it’ll all tastes bad so why not?
RAEGAN:Nani! Who you talkin’ to?

Scampy runs through the kitchen.

RAEGAN: NO SCAMPY!
MOM: SCAMPY GET OUT OF THE WAY! I’M TAPING!
ME: (LOUD COPY MACHINE NOISES)
MOM: Oooo my back hurts. Hold on camera.

Mom exits and returns in her wheelchair. She does not readjust the camera. I’m pretty sure that by now, it’s filming the ceiling.

MOM: That’s better.
RAEGAN: I wanna ride with you, Nani!
MOM: No Raegan, your mom doesn’t like you riding in the wheelchair.
RAEGAN: Mommy! Can I ride with Nani?
ME: No!
MOM: (TO CAMERA) So where was I ? Or yeah, I hate sweet spaghetti. My daughter makes hers sweet but I like to add cilantro to make it taste fresh.
ME: (OFF CAMERA COPIER NOISES, THEN…) That sounds disgusting!
MOM: I’m using veggie meat so that my daughter can eat some of this spaghetti.
ME: (OFF CAMERA) I don’t want it!
RAEGAN: Who you talkin’ to Nani?!

Cut to:
About 45 minutes later. Raegan got bored and left. Mommy is still talking to the camera and cooking. She’s on a roll now. I hear her say things like, “Shoot Honey, I like meat so I eat it!” and “Look, when ya can’t cook ya do the best you can and your family just has to deal with it!” and “I hate parsly.”

I walk into the kitchen. Taste the spaghetti. It’s really gross. I add sugar. Now it’s sweeter. My mom tastes it.

MOM: Ooooh that’s good. What’d you do?
ME: Made it sweet.
MOM: Oh. (to camera) She made it sweet.

While exiting I walk by the camera.

ME: The camera ran out of tape thirty minutes ago. You’ve been talking to yourself.
MOM: Oh well. Wouldn’t be the first time.

HA! She makes me laugh so hard.

Raegan loves this video. She tries to dance like the dog. She is not as cute as the dog.