Let me start this rant by stating, first and foremost, I am not a prude.

I am not offended by profanity; in fact I am fluent in it. I thought Eddie Murphy’s “Raw” and “The Hangover” and even “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” were hysterical. I have enjoyed, and continue to relish, off-color, inappropriate humor. In fact, under the right circumstances, I am fluent in that too. Viva la dick jokes, to paraphrase an old friend.

But my inner Tipper Gore was awakened this morning thanks to a fellow motorist whose mother must be dead, blind or at minimum, house-bound.

I was sitting at the McDonald’s drive thru waiting for my morning jolt of caffeine (don’t judge, the carbonation is way better from the fountain than the can) when my eyes wandered to the midnight blue Nissan truck ahead of me. The truck was sporting three bumper stickers on its rear window. One read, “Sex Instructor – FREE LESSONS” and one read “CAUTION – Driver Masturbating.”

I don’t know what angered and annoyed me more – the driver’s obvious lack of taste and class or the fact that the bumper stickers were both in poor taste and not at all funny. I was relieved that Cat and Tate were not in the car though I could easily imagine the conversations those stickers would generate.

“Mommy, what is a sex instructor?”

“Mommy, why does someone need lessons in sex?”

“Mommy, what is masturbating?”

“Mommy, why do you look like you are having a stroke?”

My bigger fear of course is that in 10 or so years Jim Bob and his South Park on wheels could be pulling in to my driveway to escort one of our ladies to a tractor pull or pornfest. Fortunately Darling Hubby owns guns and shovels and knows how to use both. Perhaps we should make that our bumper sticker. Or doormat.
But I digress.

At the risk of sounding like Andy Rooney, or my grandfather, or anyone over the age of 70, I must ask, really? THIS is what we have come to? We are now a society where a person’s claim of self-gratification while operating a motor vehicle should be plastered on a window for all to see? What is the personal or societal benefit of this communication? And, if true, is this idiot not advertising that he is committing at minimum, a misdemeanor and in some states a felony?

I am equally offended by bumper stickers with graphic anti-abortion messages, especially when they are accompanied by the lovely full color photos, bumper stickers with actual profanity and/or racial, religious or homophobic slurs and bumper stickers telling me that I am going to hell. Actually the last one doesn’t bother me as much since it is both probably true and a reminder that warmer days are ahead after all of this snow, but still and all, I don’t like the kids fretting about my eternal damnation while we are going to swim class.

While I don’t think of earlier times as golden eras, I have to say that I think a little bit of repression and self-censorship is not always a bad thing. I fully support your right to believe that auto-erotic asphyxiation is for lovers and that bald eagle tastes great with fried potatoes smothered in spleen-of-liberal gravy, I just don’t want to be accosted with it on my morning commute or with my kids in the car.

Since I have neither the patience nor inclination to keep the girls housebound, I must, instead craft a pithy and wise response to the girls’ questions about these visual assaults. While I dodged a bullet today, I am sure, with their ever-improving reading skills that the questions are coming. My current front-runner canned response is “oh honey, I feel so sorry for that person since they clearly have no friends to tell them how classless and annoying they are.” Truth be told though when Cat and Tate are old enough I will likely resort to, “with stickers like that, I am not at all surprised.”

My husband, my kids, my parents all asked me what I wanted for my birthday this year and I had a laundry list of ready responses – a bookcase for the library, chocolates, wine, flowers, a whole day of peace and quiet, thinner thighs.

And I wanted those things. But they weren’t what I wanted most of all.

I didn’t tell anyone what I wanted most of all because I knew there was no point. Why ask for the impossible?

What I wanted most of all, more than anything in the world, was to talk to my grandma. That would be a simple request but for the fact that she has been dead over two years.

She wasn’t just my grandma. She was my partner in crime. As I child, I followed her around so much that she called me her “tiggly-tiggly tag-along.” Not a week went by that we didn’t talk on the phone. She was my sounding board, my focus group, my biggest fan, my rock. We talked, we laughed, we bickered, we needled, we cried and then we started again. Hour-long phone calls were not unusual. I shudder to think of what the phone bills were. She used to call me her fifth child. She would say, “You are your father’s daughter but are MY baby.”

She always made a big deal about my birthday. Her gifts were always extravagant, despite her modest means but the best part would be the birthday call. She would always track me down, wherever I was, and sing to me on my birthday. She ended every call with a big kiss.

Her singing was atrocious. God, how I miss it.

Earlier today, I ran out to do an errand and the thought that I wouldn’t be getting a birthday call from her hit me with the force of a hurricane. I had to pull over and cry. After two years, I don’t miss her any less. If anything, I miss her more with each passing day.

A few minutes ago my grandpa called to wish me a happy birthday. He spent the first part of the conversation chastising me for not being reachable earlier in the day. Then he said my uncle wanted to wish me a happy birthday.

I have written about Uncle Bill before. He is mentally and physically handicapped, with the mind of about a 6-year old. Sometimes he enjoys talking with me, sometimes it is hard. We have a tendency to bicker like siblings and our conversations frequently go off track. I braced myself in case this was one of the hard days, given my grandfather’s terse and grouchy lead-in.

Bill sang to me and wished me a happy birthday. He told me about his sister’s recent visit. He told me what he had watched on t.v. and then thanked me for a video I had sent.

And then he gave me the best birthday present I have ever received.

“Tanya,” he said suddenly. “Do you know that sometimes Gram visits me in my dreams?”

“No, I didn’t know that. But that sounds nice.”

“She visited me recently,” he said seriously. “She wanted me to tell you something. She wanted me to tell you Happy Birthday. And she wanted me to give you a big birthday kiss.” He blew a kiss into the phone. “Did you get it?”

“Yeah,” I said, stunned.

“She wants you to know she watches you from heaven and she is proud. And she wants to have a really happy birthday. Did you get that?”

I got it. And it was EXACTLY what I wanted.

Thanks, Gram. And thanks Uncle Bill for delivering my gift. I cherish it more than you know.

Despite my best efforts to convince Cat and Tate that profanity is just another set a word choices and not particularly exciting, their fascination with bad words remains.

Driving to school this week, Cat asked me “Mom, what does the d-word mean?”

“The d-word? Do you mean damn or dammit?”

“Mom said DAMMIT, MOM said DAMMIT” Tate yelled gleefully.

“I was not cursing, Tate,” I said, “I was asking for clarification. I wanted to be sure Cat and I were talking about the same words before I answered her question. Maybe you two know profanity starting with d that I don’t know yet.”

“That was the word, Mom,” Cat said. “What does it mean?”

“Well,” I said, “it is a word adults use when they are tired or angry or frustrated or when something goes wrong. Like I might say it if I walked into the laundry room and saw that Scarlett ate another dog bed or if I had just cleaned the family room and then walked in to find a huge mess. It’s an indication that reality isn’t matching your expectation.”

Cat sat quietly for a few minutes and then said with genuine surprise, “Wow, Mom, I guess we should be surprised that you don’t use that one a lot more often.”

At Cat’s insistence, we are watching the opening ceremonies to the Winter Olympics. Rather, Cat is watching with rapt attention, Tate is eating ice cream, I am paying bills and Chris is wishing he had control of the remote.

Cat was particularly impressed by the snow boarder shown at the beginning of the ceremony. After he burst onto the scene in the stadium, jumped through the rings and landed, Cat jumped to her feet and started applauding wildly. She then looked at the three of us who were not applauding with great exasperation.

“Oh come on people, show that man some love. Give him some applause. After all, its the least we can do, he just risked his life for OUR entertainment. Let’s hear it.”

And so we did.

Kaylee and Colleen were painting a shoebox today to use for a Valentine box. I told them to please be careful with their clothes, because even though they were using washable paint, sometimes that stuff still doesn’t come out. Which started an argument about who should be MORE careful because they have more white on their shirt, and therefore more capacity for paint mishaps.

Finally, I couldn’t take it any more. “Just paint! There is no need to argue!”

Kaylee looked at me, confused. “But Mom, we can paint WHILE we argue.”

Seriously, they better be back in school tomorrow.

I am a sudoku snob. For the un-addicted, sudoku is a logic puzzle where you have to place the numbers 1 through 9 once and only once in each column, row and square on the board. I have done these puzzles for so long that I only do the puzzles that are 5 out of 5 or 6 out of 6 on the difficulty level.

The other week in the Post I found a 6-star sudoku I couldn’t wait to get my hands on. At first it seemed too easy; all the numbers were just falling into place. Until I hit a block. Really, I just needed one more number to set the dominos falling, but I just couldn’t get it. Now this happens every so often, there are puzzles I simply can’t solve. But it bugs the CRAP out of me. So after a couple days of my sulking and complaining about my lack of brain power, Mike calmly askd,

“Would you like me to get you the towel of shame? Or would you rather punch yourself in the head?”

Ouch. Tommy, my apologies for screwing you up so soundly.