Things Mortons Hate

In the spirit of trying to be more positive, here is an updated list of all things the Mortons positively hate. Please avoid these things for your own safety.

The Dictator: water (like, any of it ever) beans, cleaning, the outdoors, excited puppies, any fruit that isn't a strawberry, cats in close proximity, tornadoes, when other people try to clean things, "spicy things" (including garlic, black pepper, and probably parsley, if we're going to be honest with ourselves), clothing with too much embellishment, physical contact with another human being, walking anywhere, when people don't like puns, being interrupted...even if the house is on fire...even if she herself is on fire, practicing anything, melted cheddar cheese, not having a phone, sleeping, brushing her hair, having her hair cut, bees, gummy fruit snacks, having people mistake her for belonging to the wrong Hogwarts house, when servers bring her drink in completely offensive lidded kiddie cups at restaurants (this is the very worst thing of all the things)

The Dictator hates hugs,
the Anarchist hates resistance to hugs

Anarchist: restraint, silence, any moment that isn't completely full of friends and parties, when cats don't let her snuggle for long enough, when dogs don't let her hold them tightly enough, sitting, laying, standing still, long distance relationships, when animals die, when other people get hugs, when someone is crying and that someone isn't her, basically when anyone besides her is getting any attention at all, noodles, potatoes, melted cheese (who ARE these people?), having to use an inside voice, broccoli, cleaning, stopping to use the bathroom, not snuggling, having to be wary of strangers, shoes, shopping anywhere ever, bees

Bureaucrat: losing an argument, losing Monopoly, losing control of his emotions, losing control of anything, clothing of the wrong texture, finances, being hurried, my bad aim when shooting hoops into the garbage can with various garbage items, the fact that I even think that shooting hoops into the garbage can is a thing, the way I load the dishwasher, Michigan, feet

Me: chewing noises, swallowing noises, breathing noises, unnecessary movement, loud voices, practical things, vacuums, having to wear socks, long division, the white part of hard boiled eggs, humidity, being trapped behind someone walking too slowly in a stairwell/narrow hallway, sad animal movies, throat clearing noises, mostly just any noises, any meal without cheese, injustice, answering the phone, pretty much all the phone calls forever, being awake in the afternoon, slow talking, the song "Boogie Shoes."

The Fat Assassin: when the hugs from the Anarchist become too passionate, when there is one bite missing from the food dish and the idiot people don't refill it, that thing where the people sit on the couch and leave her the *exact perfect spot,* but it is not exactly perfect *enough,* and she is forced to bite someone because that's what one does when a couch spot is only *almost* perfect,  defecating in the litter box, dogs, that woman person she lives with, other cats, pretty much all living creatures, thunderstorms, light rain, when the people won't let her in the bathroom to bite their legs while they pee

The Fat Assassin also hates accessories

All of the Art Songs I Half-Remember in an Unfortunate Nutshell

I took voice lessons in high school, so I got to dabble in the odd art form of the "art song." Art songs are weird, and also really culturally specific. Here is what I remember of them, melded with what I remember of various types of choral music. I bet it's super accurate:

Italian Art/Choral Song:

"The world is full of love, and roses. This beautiful woman is like a rose, so I love her. I also love roses. And love. I love that, too. Because it reminds me of beautiful women...and roses"

Spanish/Portuguese Choral Song:

"The sun burns me by day. The moon moons me by night. And all of the time there is a fire. So much fire. The fire is inside my chest like the sun. But not so much the moon. Beautiful women are like the moon. Also, I like to sneak out with them under the moon. Because of the fire. The one in my chest. Pretty much there is fire everywhere. And of course, roses. Always roses. (Also, if I wasn't completely clear, I'm totally going to have sex with the beautiful moon/rose/fire woman now. At night. With the burning)."

Latin Choral Song:

"Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord have mercy. Seriously. We're all gonna die. Die in deathy death. Have so much mercy. Have all the mercy. Amen."

French Art Song:

"And I can't even smell the lavender, because of all the tears!"

"Higher-level, semi-sophisticated metaphors about love and beauty. Probably there is a bird somewhere in this song. Way superior to all that other junk. Because we are French and we said so."

German Art/Choral Song:

"I am in a boat. A big, sturdy boat. On a cliff is a house. A big, sturdy house. The big, sturdy house reminds me of my lady. She is big and sturdy like a house. This turns me on. I'm going to go knock on the door of her big, sturdy house until she lets me in. No. This song is not actually about sex. It is about architecture, of course. Architecture and sturdy women. I'm not sure what else there is in the world to concern oneself with."

English/Scottish/Irish Art Song:

"I love Johnny so much it makes me cry. Because of course, Johnny is not here, here in this field of lavender/thistle/wildflowers/various herbs with me. Johnny is gone. Gone far, far away. To war, or maybe on a boat for some reason, or maybe he ran off with some woman. And here I sit. Tragic and poor. Tragic and poor in this beautiful, sad field of lavender. And I can't even smell the lavender because of the tears. My mom says to suck it up. This is life. I'm poor, I just need to gather some lavender and get over it. But I'm so sad. And also it is raining. So I'm probably going to fling myself off this lavender-covered cliff into the sea, now. But first I will run to the market. Because I need to sell this lavender, and probably also some herbs, and a bolt of really British looking wool. The wool is a metaphor for my sadness. So is the cliff. But the rain? The rain is just British."

American Art Song:

"Babies are sleeping, so I'm singing about them using stuff I totally, unashamedly lifted from slave spirituals. Or maybe I will sing about mermaids. Mermaids are things people sing about in art songs, right? Right guys?""

Literally the ONLY Anarchist Without a Smartphone

I need a favor. I need someone to please, please, please tell me that I'm not alone. That I'm not "UGH! The ONLY mom EVER who cares about phones and ipads!" That I'm not the only one depriving my children of their very own, high-priced electronic devices. Please?

The Anarchist's birthday list. Note the last
item before "SUPRISES!"Only "if possable,"
of course. She knows us too well.
Maybe she hoped to manipulate us with
an adorable self portrait?

Because at first when they claimed that all of their friends had iphones, I didn't really believe them. I mean, those things are pricey, and I don't know about your kids, but you should see what has happened to the Dictator and Anarchist's expensive American Girl dolls that we told them they must treasure and handle as if they were baby kittens. Let's just say Molly is half naked, wrapped in paper, sporting unintentional dreadlocks, and Caroline is buried in an avalanche of books, rubberbands, stuffed animals, and scattered Nerd candies. I can only imagine what would happen to pricey technology. I don't know, maybe other parents have children who do things like pick up and put away. I don't have those children. I have little whirlwinds of destruction. Those phones wouldn't even see it coming.

Heck, the Anarchist would probably trade hers for half of a chicken nugget at lunch. I am not exaggerating. She totally would.

So yeah. I figured no one else would think it wise to put technology that I cannot even afford for myself into the hands of people who still publicly pick their noses and eat it, but then I looked around. It really, truly does appear actually ALL of my kids' friends do, in fact, have smart phones, or at least tablets of some sort. The Dictator and Anarchist really, truly, may be the only children on the face of the universe (or at least on the face of suburbia) who languish for lack of access to mind-numbing games, and all those newfangled social media apps like Snappychat and Kicky or whatever. 

And I started to feel guilty. For like, a split second. But then I remembered this:

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that kids only engage in this kind of media for one or two hours a day. This is in contrast to the whopping seven hours a day that the average child consumes.

Seven hours.

That's as much time as they spend in school.

Seven hours.

Nope, nope, nope.

And I also remembered this:

The Bureaucrat and I can barely afford our own fancy technology. So, we are certainly not going to be nice enough to give it to our kids. We are not even nice enough to share our candy with them. 

And I also remembered this:

I am lazy and exhausted. 

Lazy and exhausted results in not a whole ton of micro-manage-y child oversight on my part. I am a free range parent without even meaning to be. It's not neglect, exactly. It's mostly just more Cheetos than they should probably be given in any given time period coupled with a few too many Minecraft You Tube videos, topped off with a bit of "whatever" when it comes to room cleaning. Let's just say I'm a Type B mom. That sounds respectable. And good for my heart. 

But not so great for controlling the screen time. Other kids may only use their phones when their homework is done and their rooms are clean, but if my kids had their own devices, they would lock themselves in their room with their eyes glazed over and their thumbs permanently glued to the screens while I watched Netflix and cried about poetry made a wholesome dinner and scrubbed my floors. They would be totally and completely unsupervised. The ideal one hour would turn into eight hours, and I'd be all like, "They're fine. I'm sure they're reading Dostoevsky and knitting mittens for orphans." Meanwhile, the Dictator would have taught herself code, become a female gaming blogger, been subjected to threats by idiotic, misogynistic boy gamers in capes, and become embroiled in Gamergate II, a fact that I would probably only discover from obsessively scanning my own phone in a vain attempt to not feel so alone.

And the Anarchist would have run off with the first guy/girl/cat/inanimate object she met on Tinder.

Capes and cats, people. This is terrifying. At least when they watch a batrillion hours of television, I can see what they're watching (British people playing Minecraft, it turns out). 

Thusly, despite the Anarchist's adorable birthday request, I cannot allow my innocent children to have their own electronic devices (until such a time as they wear me down with their incessant whining). I know plenty of parents who do a great job managing the screen time of their kiddos, but I know myself, and I know I would never supervise my kids' technology use adequately. Also, the Dictator is enough of a zombie. And the Anarchist already has the attention span of a flea. And zombies and fleas are not things I want to unleash on the universe.

So I will continue repeating my super-annoying mantra, "Boredom breeds creativity. It's great that you're bored. Go be creative," and hope that they don't resent me too, too much (but if they do, I hope they channel that resentment into super-angsty art). Also, I will hope to find at least one other parent in this world as mean as I am. Because it would be lovely to counter, "I'm literally THE ONLY ONE without a phone!" with, "No, you're not. And stop overusing the world 'literally.'"

Man, that would be satisfying. Literally, the most satisfying thing ever.

*Closes blog. Returns to mindlessly and obsessively scanning social media for signs of life.*