Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

My daughter wanted to wear green today. Her wardrobe consists mainly of pink and red but I recently bought her a green shirt and a pair of pants. However, because she spends ever other weekend with her father I wasn’t sure the green outfit was here.

I dug through her dresser and thankfully located both shirt and pants. I was happily surprised to see that the green on both items matched. I really thought I had done well and also dodged a bullet.

“That’s not green” she said when I presented the clothes to her.

“Sure it is” I insisted.

“No, that’s greenish blue”

I took a closer look and sure enough the shirt and pants were teal. Still close enough in my book.

The daughter was not having any of it and was getting ready to cry.  At seven she is far too concerned with what other people think, specifically one little girl who will grow up to be a Mean Girl in high school, a leader of a clique.

I am surprised I haven’t bought more green clothing for her. She is a redhead and redheads wear green. Except my daughter’s favorite color is red so that is what we have. When she was younger I could get her anything I wanted, now that isn’t the case.

My daughter is a redhead but my son is a toehead. Actually right now his hair is jet black but that’s from a bottle. He is the only non redhead in the family. All of my nieces have red hair. When my son was little I dressed him in green, red and yellow. The same colors my nieces were wearing. At one point my sister in law remarked that I was dressing him as if he were a redhead.

Interestingly my son didn’t see himself dressed in shades of green. In every picture he drew of himself he is wearing a red shirt and blue pants, with yellow hair.

When my daughter came along I wasn’t as interested in dressing her like a redhead. Dressing her like a girl was much more entertaining. Her clothing was frilly, it had bows and beads, it was pink. It has remained that way ever since. The only other green item of clothing is a holiday dress in velvet. Not practical since it is not Christmas and it is two sizes too small.

We were running out of time and I had to get her moving. I told her I didn’t care what she wore but she needed to get something on quickly. She suggested we stop at Target and get a shirt with a few shamrocks on it. Luckily Target wasn’t open yet.

Daughter has recently decided that she needs glasses. She isn’t willing to get a second opinion however and is happy to wear my glasses. She has been begging me to let her wear them to school for the last couple of weeks.

I made a compromise.

“You can wear a pair of my glasses to school if you get dressed right now. I think I might even have a pair of green ones you can wear”

I have gobs of glasses. My father was an ophthalmologist and I used to work in his office.  Save for one pair of prescription sunglasses, I have never lost a pair. I started digging through the junk drawer (which I have still not organized) looking for a pair of green glasses I was wearing around the time of my brother’s first marriage 20 some years ago. I couldn’t find the green ones but I did manage to find the red ones. Remember glasses in the 80’s? The lenses are so big they cover your cheeks. That’s what I had.

I tried to pass them off as unique. No one is wearing big glasses. You wear these and everyone will want a pair. I also tried to sell her on transition lenses. I told her to put them in the sun and they would turn into sunglasses. They didn’t work. I don’t know if they wore off or what but they remained regular old glasses.

She bought it.

Either my kid will be  the trailblazer in her St. Patrick’s Day teal and huge red non transitioning glasses or she is going to come home in tears.

Thankfully, it’s Wednesday and her dad picks her up.

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I was asked to write a guest post about the top ten things men do that drive women crazy. I came up with the standard ones, leaving the toilet seat up, farting, hands down their pants, that kind of thing, but I couldn’t come up with ten and my post went horribly in the wrong direction. The post was rejected and I was given a different topic to write about.

Since I do not live with a man anymore, at least not at present( and the 17 year old boy doesn’t count because I am raising him not to do those things, though he does anyway), I wasn’t able to come up with any more than those three or four. And they all seemed really petty to me now, though they did drive me crazy then.

But I wonder what things men and women do that drive each other bonkers.

Here is the original post:

There have been a million articles written about the things men do that irritate their women. We all  know that leaving the toilet seat up, clipping their nails anywhere but the bathroom, spending the weekend on the couch with their hands down their pants and performing  Dutch Ovens are things that drive women mad. Which is probably why men do these things.

Let’s face it, men, specifically married men, have gotten a bad rap in the last decade or so. They are usually portrayed as big dumb oafs on sitcoms and television commercials.  They stumble through life not knowing what to do. Thankfully they have their smart wife to steer them through life’s challenges.

I’m not going to perpetuate that myth. I love men. I do. And my track record of two marriages and two subsequent divorces proves it. At present I have been single just long enough to appreciate all the great things about men.

Now that I am single I have to kill all the icky things myself. If a toilet gets backed up I have to plunge it out. My last ex husband was a phenomenal cook, I ate well when I was married. So what that he couldn’t put a dish in the dishwasher to save his life, I had a three course meal prepared for me every day we were together.

If something needed repairing my guy could do it. Sure I had to nag all the time but isn’t that what he wanted me to do?

Even though I am divorced I haven’t lost the ability to look and act pathetic when something goes wrong. I can convey that ineptness over the phone and my ex husband will come over and fix just about anything. As long as I have cold beer in the fridge.

Not too long ago I was given a glimpse of what a great guy my ex husband really is. I was having surgery and he offered to hang out at the hospital and wait to see that I was okay. He took the day off of work, drove me to the hospital, waited for hours while they prepped and performed the surgery and then waited in recovery with me while I came off all the drugs they used to put me under. He didn’t even bring a video camera to capture all the bizarre things I was saying.

It gave me great comfort to know that someone was out there waiting for me, that someone cared enough about me to take a day off of work and watch game shows while I had surgery on my girlie parts.  He wasn’t obligated to do any of that. When he stopped at the drugstore on the way home to pick up the necessary feminine protection products and purchased them himself, I was reminded of what a great guy he really is.

We women forget that about our men. We complain to our girlfriends that all they do is hang out in the garage, go fishing with their friends, never spend enough time with us, never stroke our egos enough and all those other top ten things they do to irritate the hell out of us. When they do the little things like buying tampons or plunging out that backed up toilet we often take it for granted.

I’d take nail clippings and Dutch Ovens any day.

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