by Jen Logan | Oct 24, 2018 | Being Awesome, Life, Parenting
Turning into my dad is scary enough, but I have also married a man just like my dad. I don’t even want to think about the psychology behind that one.
Years ago we used to make fun of my dad after my mom came home one day to find him painting one of the bedrooms in the house completely naked. He was home alone and didn’t want to ruin another shirt with the little paint splatters that accompany a paint roller. It has been a running joke to never show up at my parents’ house if my dad is painting. My mom has told everyone she knows about the day she came home and found her husband painting naked, so even her friends would joke about stopping by unannounced. They would say things like “I’m dropping off some paperwork in your front door. Pat’s not painting is he?” The poor Old Man has been the naked painter for much of his adult life. Luckily, nothing embarrasses him.
I don’t know if this is something other people do because I am never the one who paints the bedrooms or the furniture or anything else. When the paint comes out I typically head in the other direction. I have had to clean up my daughter after she helped grandpa paint and I can see where the naked painting thing could be the way to go. My husband does the painting in our house, and I think that’s the way it will probably always be. He has been a painting madman over the last week and I have hidden in another part of the house and remained busy so he could not ask for my help.
We participate in an annual trunk or treat event at my daughter’s school. Our themes have ranged from KISS to My Little Pony. Our daughter picks her costume every year and we go with that theme. It’s a lot of work, but we get to create something as a family and our daughter is always so proud of what we put together. This year was a Harry Potter theme. My husband constructed an entrance for the back of the car from wood and fabric to look like the wall for platform 9 3/4. The kids enter through the tunnel to get their candy. He built and painted all week. A few nights ago after I got our daughter tucked in I walked down into the basement where he was painting the fabric pieces that make up the walls of the set. He looked up at me from the floor where he was squatting over the fabric spong painted brick wall wearing nothing but a smile and declared “I totally get it now!” He went on to explain how he had to hang the pieces to dry from the ceiling and didn’t want anything to touch his clothing which was balled up on the floor.
I guess the naked painter torch can now be passed to my husband. If anyone needs to drop anything in our front door during the fall or any other time we may be working on a project, it may be best to call ahead, or don’t go peeking in the window if nobody answers the door. I would like to say this is strictly because of the naked painter thing, but truly I also vacuum in my underwear so it may just be a family thing. Again, I married a man just like my dad and I have turned into him as well.
Our trunk or treat car was a success, mostly because my daughter has a dad and a grandpa that will do anything for her. The guys got the car set up at the school. They assembled the structure and hung the fabric while I got the props set up and the pumpkin juice and candy ready for the littles. I scared some kids as Bellatrix and John was mistaken for a mad scientist by more than one kid who wasn’t familiar with Harry Potter, but we had a lot of little wizards and witches who loved the theme and most of the parents had at least seen the movies if they hadn’t read the books. And my entire family was able to keep their clothes on for the entire event. Miracles will never cease!
**This post is brought to you by lots and lots of punk rock and mass amounts of coffee. They are the two things that keep me going on a daily basis.
by Jen Logan | Aug 22, 2018 | Being Awesome, Life
My whole family took a little trip to a fun center out by my parents’ lake house this week. The venue had a ton of options including laser tag, trampolines, bumper cars, an escape room, glow in the dark golf and a big arcade. We spent the first twenty minutes trying not to trip over each other while chasing glow in the dark golf balls around the second floor. While doing so I learned two things – my golf game does not improve in the dark and my daughter has not outgrown her poor sportsmanship phase. She makes Happy Gilmore look like a the Dalai Lama. She took about a hundred swings and picked up her ball more than once, but the lights were out so apparently nobody was supposed to see her shenanigans.
While we were checking out the arcade games we noticed a group of adult men hanging around. They were playing an arcade game as if there were valuable prizes on the line for winning. I don’t know if they had perused the prize center, but it was mostly landfill and sugar. Maybe they were anxious to get their hands on a pillow shaped like a giant turd for 2,000 tickets.
As we watched these grown men walk around the place talking to groups of young boys playing games, offering advice on the best way to get their name on the winners board, my parents discussed the probability of them being pedophiles on the prowl. I was ready to agree until the largest of the men turned around and I saw his face. It looked as if someone had taken a sharpie to him after he passed out the night before and etched a thin handlebar moustache on his cheeks. He was also wearing what appeared to be a Captain America t-shirt that only covered the top two thirds of his beer gut. I questioned whether or not a pedophile would try to draw that much attention to himself. Then again, I have seen news stories of some criminal who got caught robbing a bank due to the surveillance footage of a giant tattoo on his forehead reading “thug for life”.
Jumping on the trampoline was fun but I was quickly reminded that I am a middle aged woman who should not jump around like a teenager unless I do more kegel exercises. Every time my feet hit the floor I peed my pants a little. Some activities really should have age limits. This was one of those times I would have actually appreciated a sign to protect me from myself – specifically one that read “caution! jumping may make you wet your pants”.
Laser tag was mostly me hiding in a corner trying to outsmart my husband as he chased Riley around in the dark. I heard screams of “don’t shoot me daddy!” from across the room so of course I went to her rescue. She apparently takes laser tag even more seriously than glow golf. I hugged her as she sobbed into my blue flashing vest “Daddy just keeps shooting me. It’s not fair” which really meant “I”m not winning and this game sucks”. I promised to help her sufficiently destroy her father before the game was over. We attacked him from both sides as the door to freedom opened. 
We decided it was time to leave when we reentered the arcade and found Snidely Whiplash chatting up a couple soccer moms and their kids. We cashed in our tickets and stood around the counter as my daughter tried to decide between an emoji ball and an unnamed toy that was basically a tube of slime. She settled on a blue slime tube. I watched my daughter trying to ram her entire fist through the center of her new toy while walking to the car, and I realized what all the creepy old dudes were turning in their tickets for. This little unnamed prize was actually very similar to a sex toy for men. I guess the family fun center really does offer something for everyone. If we ever return i’m not going to argue if our pile of tickets turns into a sparkly unicorn poop pillow.
I wrote this while listening to The Melvins.
by Jen Logan | Jun 21, 2018 | Being Awesome, Life
My daughter was looking through some of my old yearbooks last weekend. As I flipped the pages and looked at pictures of my class, I was a little shocked at how few of my classmates I remembered. I was also shocked that when I saw the picture of one particular girl I was brought right back to being a twelve year old girl and wanting to rip someone’s head off. Not so shockingly, it wasn’t even the girl, it was her mother.
I went to a very small school. There were less than 15 students in my grade and most of us had been in school together since we were very young. One girl that I was good friends with wore glasses the depth of the bottom of a glass soda bottle. Of course when some of the other girls teased her the words “Coke bottle” were often used. These are the words that I heard come out of the mouth of a girl we will call “Judy” that initiated my feelings of ill will toward her mother.
Judy was the kind of girl who defined herself by her looks. Her entire self worth was wrapped up in the emblem on her popped collared shirts and pink headbands. She spent more time in front of a mirror than a book and her school supplies consisted of glosses and powders rather than leads and paper. Looking back, I can’t really blame her for this, it was how she had been conditioned by her mother who was a walking Ralph Lauren advertisement. I think Judy’s mom was pretty, but it was hard to tell what she really looked like under all the mascara and hairspray. Sometimes her insides showed through which is exactly what kept her in the pageant runner up category. She would never be beautiful with all of her insides making an appearance like they did. She was full of gossip and snarky comments. It was no wonder Judy only felt good about herself when she was making others feel badly about themselves.
Judy never picked on me the way she did my friend. I think she knew better than to enter a battle of wits unarmed. Twelve years of smart assery had left me a relative wit warrior. Having an overly healthy self-esteem, her words would have been like paper airplanes attacking me. I threw grenades. And after she called my friend “Coke bottle” that day, I threw a pretty hefty grenade. I don’t recall my exact words but the message was that even the strongest braces were not going to fix her enormous buck teeth. Although I was a skilled verbal swords woman I was also a prepubescent girl so my natural reaction was to go directly for the jugular. She had no comeback for me other than to scream “BITCH!” which was, unfortunately for her, overheard by a nun walking down the hall. We were both taken to the headmistress’s office and our parents were called. I don’t recall any punishment. I do remember that our mothers had a telephone conversation that night.
In that conversation Judy’s bumbleheaded mother informed my mom that Judy was forced to call me a bitch. My mom asked if I had held her down and made her recite the word. I don’t think Judy’s mom understood what “personal responsibility” meant when my mom used the words and she certainly didn’t understand what my mom was getting at when she was trying to find out how I had coerced poor little Judy into swearing at me. Judy’s mom finally let her insides show and said “maybe if you stayed at home with your daughter these things wouldn’t happen…” My mom is a better person than I am. Where I would have said “maybe if you didn’t spend so much time with your daughter she wouldn’t know what a bitch was”, my mom remained calm and continued the conversation until they finally agreed to disagree and hung up. My mom has told me many times that there is no fixing stupid.
I know those words cut my mom. I know she often felt guilty about being a working mom in a land of stay at home moms. I know this because I used that guilt as a weapon on many occasions. Again, I was a prepubescent girl so my natural reaction was to go directly for the jugular – mother or not. Plus, I was kind of a manipulative little asshole. Those words actually provoked me to be a little more like my mom. I was pretty certain that Judy’s mom truly was a bitch and it was probably because she was miserable with her life decisions. I had always thought that my rebelliousness came from my dad, but I realized then that my mom had been bucking the system my whole life.
by Jen Logan | May 11, 2018 | Being Awesome, Life
Practice makes perfect right? There is usually a positive correlation between the number of times you do something and your ability to do it. Driving seems to not follow this rule. Like dancing or listening, it seems to be something you are either good at or not. Practice may help, but if you are one of those bad drivers I see on the road every day, you are never going to be good at it, no matter how many hours you spend behind the wheel. You may become barely competent at best. Taxi drivers are a pretty good example of this theory. They spend more hours behind the wheel than they do on their feet in any given day and they still get as many middle fingers directed at them as Jane Fonda at a Veteran’s Day parade.
I remember taking a driver’s education class before getting my license as a teenager. I took a week long class about two weeks before obtaining my license and I literally drove the instructor’s vehicle for less than ten minutes in that week. I did, however, drive myself to the class daily since it was in the summer, my parents weren’t home and the car I was getting for my upcoming birthday was already parked in our garage. I was a rule breaker from birth, so this didn’t seem like a particularly bad thing to do. In my fifteen year old mind driving without a license was less of a crime than inconveniencing a family member or neighbor by asking them for a ride.
Let’s go!
When the instructor asked me how much experience I had driving I said “a little”. Having no point of reference, it seemed like an acceptable answer. I had been riding a motorcycle since I could hold it up by myself and logged as many hours riding as a long-haul trucker full of adderal. I had also been appointed the designated driver at the age of eight on a trip to Canada with the Indian Princesses. This sounds bad until you know that we pulled into a gas station and a nine year old was behind the wheel of another car. Okay, I guess it still sounds bad. Regardless, I thought everyone had the same amount of experience as I did. I was mistaken.
I spent three of the five days in class sitting in the backseat praying that I didn’t die because the fifteen year old in the front seat couldn’t simultaneously keep her hands at ten and two and her foot on the gas peddle. I quit turning to look out the back window after awhile, fully expecting to get flattened by a semi because little Suzy couldn’t get our car up to the speed limit in the football field length of space she had on the freeway entrance ramp. A sat, silently praying that the gas peddle and steering wheel would receive some kind of divine intervention. Somehow, by the end of the week, everyone was sent on their way to the Secretary of State with a certificate of completion.
Like mother, like daughter!
I was behind a student driver last week that made little Suzy look like a race care driver. She was holding onto the wheel so tightly I could see her knuckles bulging from the side mirror as she attempted to make a right turn. I tried not to laugh as her back tire took the curb on the way around the bend. My amusement turned to concern as I saw a line of vehicles behind her attempting to pass as she drove down the center of two lanes. I think I even saw an old lady with a walker flip her a middle finger as she walked past. This girl was a hazard on the road, barely moving. I felt like I was watching the slow speed police chase led by OJ Simpson.
Unfortunately, I have seen many middle aged people driving the exact same way – people who should have years of driving experience. I watched a fifty year old man drive a mile through my neighborhood with two wheels completely on the curb. I don’t know if it was his first time driving or if he was one of the people who would just never quite get the hang of driving. All I know is I had to slow down to avoid the spray of dust behind him and I watched people walking their dog pull back onto the grass to avoid the cloud coming at them. My seven year old giggled from the back seat asking “what in the world is that guy doing?” Even at her young age she knows when she sees a bad driver and she is not afraid to point them out. She has certainly heard enough backseat driving coming from the front seat!
If there is a good driving gene, I guess my daughter has a 50/50 shot of getting it. Although my husband and I have both spent countless hours behind the wheel, only one of us is really good at it. Just in case it is a skill that will develop with practice, we have put her behind the wheel already. She sits on my husband’s lap and drives around empty parking lots. I’m happy to say she is doing better than at least 60% of the drivers I see on the road. I know driver’s education classes are still a long time away but I am already contemplating where I will hide the car keys. After all, she is my kid.
by Jen Logan | Apr 16, 2018 | Being Awesome, Life
My Mom has a bell that sits on a table in her family room. Last month my daughter was playing with it and my husband started saying “bring me my chair!” My daughter, of course, looked at him like he was crazy and went about her business. After he said this three times, she finally asked what he was talking about. I shared the fifteen year old joke with her.
The year before my husband and I were married my dad was in a pretty bad motorcycle accident. He was halfway across the state on his way to Sturgis on the weekend of my parents’ thirty fourth wedding anniversary when it happened. A teenage girl made a left turn in front of him and hit him head on. He went over the hood of her car after his handlebars broke his pelvis in four places. He was taken to a hospital 150 miles from home. He called me to come pick him up. He said he was fine but his bike was damaged and told me to bring “the big ride”, which was his car, so he could lay down in the backseat on the way home. I would like to say that he was delirious from the pain meds, but he refused to take them, so the idea that he was leaving the hospital that day in his own car was purely his own stubbornness. I realized when we got there why he had called me to come with my mom and why he wanted his car – my poor mom almost fainted when she saw him. The doctor pulled up the x-rays on the screen and they literally had to bring in a gurney for her to lie down. My mom does not do well with trauma or blood. I vividly recall her hitting the floor when I had blood drawn at the age of seven. She was not going to do well taking care of my dad’s wounds as he healed. Which brings us to the bell…
My dad got out of the hospital as quickly as he could after his accident. He spent a week in a room with an elderly man that continually rang the nurse demanding “where’s my pain pill?!” My dad dislikes nothing more than whining, so his patience was tested the entire time he was in that hospital bed. I think ditching his roommate was his biggest motivation for being discharged next to being able to eat ice cream directly out of the carton at midnight. He was brought home in an ambulance and took up residency in a hospital bed in my parents’ family room for the next several months. He was home, but immobile with pins and a halo around the front of his body. My mom gave him the little gold bell to ring when he needed anything.
The little golden bell has been a staple in my parents’ house for as long as I can remember. When I was sick as a child, my mom would get me all tucked in on the couch and put the bell on the table next to me. I was plagued by stomach issues as a child so I am guessing the bell was just as useful for my mom to be able to get ahead of a mess. Unfortunately, I normally rang the bell after I barfed all over the floor. Luckily my dad used the bell more timely than I did as a child.
Loud pipes save lives!
My dad was a really easy patient. He rarely asked for anything while he was recuperating. Mostly what he asked for was for people to stop asking him what he needed. The one thing he did need from us was to bring him his “chair” which was really a commode. When you are laid up in a hospital bed for weeks there is not a lot to do other than eat, read and watch television. Fortunately for my dad, my mom provides comfort on plates and she cooks when she is stressed. Because of this, my dad probably ate more in those few months than he did in the year prior. Unfortunately for me, the more you eat, the more you poop. I spent my afternoons bringing my dad’s chair over to his bed and leaving the room multiple times. After awhile my mom and I started a little battle with each other. She fed him chili the night before I came to sit with him and I brought him tacos for lunch. My poor dad’s digestive system was a pawn in our poop war. He even joined the battle one night when he finally succumbed to taking a pain pill but mistakenly took a stool softener. We all lost that battle – repeatedly.
I don’t know where the bell originated from, but it has always been a part of being sick or injured. Much like a warm blanket and soft pillow, the bell is a source of comfort. It sits on the table unnoticed until the patient’s fever hits 101 and then it is delivered on a little tray with a glass of orange juice. It’s a wonder the bell at my parents’ house still rings after my daughter got her hands on it. She could take some lessons in good patient etiquette from her grandfather.
As most traditions do, this one spread – to my house. The Easter Bunny brought me my own bell in my basket this year. It was quickly claimed by my daughter who has been using it to request breakfast on the couch most mornings. She is not really a traditionalist and has decided that if the bell is good enough for sick days, it is good enough for ALL days. She rings that little sucker when she wants her tray of food brought to her and again when she wants the tray cleared away or when she wants a fruit refill. The kid has a pretty charmed life. I’m the bumblehead who keeps coming back every time the bell rings. I’m like Pavlov’s dog without the drool. When she can tell I am getting a little irritated by her demands she waits until I am halfway out the door and yells “BRING ME MY CHAIR!!” It gets a laugh out of me every time.
In honor of Ian MacKaye’s birthday today, I wrote this piece while listening to Minor Threat
by Jen Logan | Apr 8, 2018 | Being Awesome, Life
One of us had a custom plate…
My friend texted me the other day that she got a new car. She didn’t notice her new license plate until she was approaching her car from the rear at Costco. The license plate began with “BJ” which made her want to drive right back to the dealership and return the car. I told her it wasn’t that bad. Well, unless it ended in “QUEEN” or started with “FREE”. She kept the car.
I have seen a lot of interesting vanity plates over the years. I have never had one, and I have a feeling that they wouldn’t print anything I would want my plate to say. I remember spending some time in Washington DC and being amazed at the amount of vanity plates. It made sense with all the politicians and their over-inflated egos. Of course people had to know who they were, even if it took a license plate to give them their proper recognition. Maybe it is trendy with the transplants. Some of the plates I had to look at for a full minute before I could decipher what they were trying to convey. None of the plates were comical or ironic like the ones I like to see. I didn’t even see a single “POLILOSER” or anything similar. Boring.
In the city I live in, I don’t see very many vanity plates, but when I do they are actually pretty helpful to me. I can pull up next to the plate that says “Shriya” and yell “Hey Shriya, congratulations on your first time driving a car. It only took you two and a half minutes to navigate that turn and you almost missed that mailbox!” I feel it’s nice to call people by name when you can. A thumbs up is also appreciated. Sometimes they even return a hand gesture, but that is usually from a driver with the “MYTOY” or “VETTEGUY” plate.
He’s creepin’
I was behind a car a few years ago that had a vanity plate that read “HOTTIE2”. I guess “HOTTIE1” was already taken. I thought I was behind a beauty queen runner up but when I pulled up beside the 1998 Cavalier, there was a 90 year old man peering over the steering wheel. Hottie 2 indeed. Maybe he meant Hottie World War 2. Either this old guy had a wicked sense of irony or he had borrowed his granddaughter’s car. Either way, I liked him. His granddaughter probably got that plate thinking it would prevent people from asking to borrow it. Well played old dude. He got a thumbs up which immediately caused him to swerve into the curb.
My family was driving a month ago headed north to go visit my Grandmother. We pulled up next to a van with a plate that read “CREEPEN”. It was a dark van with tinted windows in the back. All it needed was a sign on the side that said “FREE CANDY” to complete the look. It would have been funnier if it wasn’t in mid-Michigan where the movie Deliverance could be considered a documentary. The van was full of a group of college guys. Now I am really hoping the plate was meant to be ironic. If not, it is at least a great public service announcement.
It got me wondering if “CREEPER” or “CREEPIN” were already taken. If not, I may have found my vanity plate. They are going to love me when I pick up my 7 year old from school!
Not surprisingly, I wrote this piece while listening to some punk rock. Die, Die My Darling by the Misfits of course!
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