Packing Light Baggage

Today my oldest came home with a poor grade on the essay he labored over for two weeks.

My daughter fell apart when the hat she had knitted for her youngest sister did.

The one day now Six year old needed me to go in and conference with her teacher over some kids saying nasty things at the playground.

The eight year old boy made his own kite out of paper and then crashed horribly on his bike when the string got stuck in the spokes, destroyed the kite and clogged the gears. He cursed the bike and threw it down on the driveway and came in demanding that we sell it on ebay and get him a new one.

My four year old had four accidents.

The two year old was found this morning naked in her crib which she had also stripped,

and the baby woke up grouchy and cried whenever she was put down.

All of which means, if you read the tea leaves correctly…

Mom is going out of town tomorrow.

The ten year old, the only one not mentioned in that little drama that unfolded, hid herself in the basement playing Nintendo DS. I have come to have a new appreciation for gameboy…at the very least, it lets me pack.

Off to Dayton for the Erma Bombeck Writer’s Conference to learn how to be funny, and try my hand at Stand-up. Oddly enough, people keep leaving messages to me to please please, not actually break a leg…seeing as I have a knack for making difficult situations impossible. I think they are concerned I’ll actually take them literally.

I will try to update the blog, but if that’s not possible, I’ll see about getting a guest blogger for the occasion.

if you want more amusement in the meantime, try http://www.humor-blogs.com/

Opening Lines

I've got 3 weeks to get ready for Erma Bombeck...here's a bit of my routine, still a work in progress...

"Hello, my name is Sherry Antonetti and I'm a mother of eight children. Now when you are a mom of that many, sometimes it's hard to transition to the adult world. So to the man at the table last night, whose wine I substituted with apple juice...and put in a sippy cup, and whose meat I cut, I'm very very sorry."

"I hadn't planned to come to this workshop, but then I had this dream. Anyone here have toddlers? Then you know who Bob the Builder is, yellow hat, blue overalls, talks with machines that are all primary colors and have googly eyes. He has a partner Wendy with a blonde pony tail and a cell phone, and they chant "Can We do it?" "Yes We Can!"

Anyway, when you have a dream about Bob and Wendy...
having a post coital conversation...
He's in a robe. She's in a button down shirt...
There's reminants of dinner on the table...maybe a fire softly flickering...
When you have THAT sort of a dream...

It's time for an intervention.

I told my husband about this dream.
Now we have a pretty good marriage, seventeen and a half years.
I told my husband about this dream, and he booked me on the next flight to Dayton.

It's been great. I've really enjoyed myself...I have all this time.
Seriously...what do you people do all day? I've brushed my teeth six times already...
just because I can.

I'm thinking of going to the gift store and buying some floss.

Yes...I'm living the dream...

Now raising eight kids is scary. Every time we have a new kid, it's scary. But you know the rule, if you want to stop being scared about something, do something even scarier...so I thought I'd try stand up comedy.

It's pretty cool.

There aren't many things at the age of 41 that one can do that are "cool" that don't involve the distinct possibility of major medical insurance being necessary...unless you count the possibility of psychological counseling for subconcious abuse of animated characters...

Parenting eight...
It's kind of like juggling...as long as you don't drop any of the balls that are in the air, you're okay. My problem? I never really learned to juggle past three...

I mean...when we had one or two, we had as my husband called it, man to man coverage.
Two kids...two adults...easy.
Three and four and five...we switched to zone defense and we bought a mini-van.

Six, Seven and Eight I haven't been on time for something since 2005. We're trying to run out the biological clock.

But it's fun...sometimes we'll go to the airport and just walk through the terminal en masse just to watch the terror on the business travelers faces....I know what you're thinking....that was you?

We get stopped and asked questions often.
people ask questions like "Don't you know how this works?"
and I say "Yeah, you see Wendy and Bob..."

or
"You don't work do you?" I'm sorry, but if the word Mom or Dad is associated with you in anyway as a moniker, you work...it's just the compensation packages that vary.
or

"I guess that's okay if you can afford them all.."

I got news for people. No one says, "According to my economic indicators, we can afford eight children so let's get to it!"

But the biggest question of all I get....and I conceed the most common, is "Why?"
Now I could get spiritual on all you people and say they're gifts from God which they are, or religious and mention that I am a practicing Catholic, which I am, but the real reason is I'm still working through some issues from middle school when I got a report card and the teacher wrote, "Sherry is Very Talented but a perpetual underachiever...."

I'm not sure but I think I showed her.
for humor that isn't always trying to overcompensate, try www.humor-blogs.com!