Month: September 2016

poor alex.

…our quiet, stickler-for-the-rules, over-achiever…  stuck with a family in which this is a disadvantage.

Any parent can inflict middle-child type issues – that’s rookie stuff.  We Iseminger’s… we strive for screwing up our kids via innovative, unchartered paths.  We completely shun our first born.

I can’t even imagine if she should read this – she’s a drama queen, she’ll  run with the ‘woes me’ pity party; so let me clarify:  Alex is far from neglected, it’s just that Cal is the only son for this blogger who wanted a houseful of boys (oh shut up… the girls are keenly aware of the fact I only wanted boys, we have counseling funds set aside for them), and Abby has 319 cubic yards of personality crammed into a little sprite of a body.

That leaves Alex, our first born, our reliable, serious, accept-nothing-but-perfection, beautiful girl for us to forsake (case in point – I started this entry almost 3 weeks ago……. oh that poor Alex).

Again… let’s be clear… we spend copious amounts of time toting her ass to softball tournaments all over this state (and neighboring states) and we never miss her other events – it just seems… we don’t record them… you know, for posterity.

Of course, she hates having her picture taken so I will have that to fall back on; unfortunately she’s also the premier authority on the dissemination of guilt so it’ll still be my fault.  “Mommmm, I can’t BELIEEEVE you didn’t MAKE me have my picture taken….” I’ll just look her square in the eyes and holler, “I only ever wanted boys anyway!” then I’ll throw some of her psychiatry fund at her and storm off (I’m feeling pretty good about my odds if I come off as the offended party).

So, in the name of putting her therapy fund to good use…..

She had her first marching band outing 3 weeks ago and I have not a single picture.  NOT.A.SINGLE.PICTURE.  We stood right in front of her – seriously… we were nowhere to be found for the football game and then at halftime, there we were… front and center on the 50.  (you can bet your sweet ass we’ll be found when Cal is out there playing….)

This girl lugged a bari-sax around the field in 85 degree heat wearing wool coveralls, jacket, one of those ridiculous hats and awful, awful, horrendous shoes. Stop it all of you marching band people, stop it now – you know those outfits are outlandish (the fact I didn’t get a picture just to taunt her with shows my mental decline).

My favorite part of the get-up is – none of those football players will give my girl a second glance while she’s prancing around in those shapeless……. pants(?) – I don’t even know what the hell you’d call ’em.  In a group of similarly clad individuals, marching on the field with various instruments, it’s at least excusable… walking around the sidelines – not so much (yay! she can date AFTER she completes her residency).

As far as not getting pictures goes… does anybody besides me wonder what the hell Dan Iseminger was doing during all of this???  I was, after all, doing my part – standing there with tears dropping, wondering how I made this amazing person who absolutely slays every single thing she tries….  He’s the music guy – he’s the band parent.  All of this musical talent stems from him and his kin – why wasn’t he taking some damned pictures?

Anyway… at home later, I told her we had no photographic evidence of her first outing; in true Alex I-am-the-worst-at-everything fashion, she lamented  “oh I so don’t care… I was awful!  Weren’t you paying attention mom?  I played the wrong note a few times, I stepped in the wrong direction twice…”  I stopped her, “Alexandra…  it’s me.  My musical prowess begins and ends with the on/off button of the radio – of which I have about an 85% success rate.  I have zero idea what you’re supposed to be doing or playing – frankly: I’m the best fan you could ever have.”  She’s 14, she’s ostentatious, she beat me down… in defeat, I finally agreed she sucked….

Earlier, when she emerged from the locker room (is that where they ditch those heinous outfits???  I should probably know more about this….) she was carrying the box which housed her new marching band shoes (trust me, they’re as ugly, if not uglier, than they sound);  she handed me said box, I peered inside and said, “well hell! This is fantastic… now we don’t have to shop for Homecoming shoes!”

She cried.

 

(for the marching band record: Dan told me the Everett Band was fantastic)

 

So last weekend, I spent an hour locked in a room with a zombie…

Wait, wait… I wanna do this chronologically; forget I wrote that.

Let me start with this:  My “sister” Missy celebrated her 50th birthday last weekend (I used quotation marks because – well, I don’t actually have a sister).  We refer to each other as ‘sister’ because in many ways we are sisters – we snip at each other, we get on each other’s nerves (her more than me obviously…) and at the end of the day we have each other’s back unfailingly.

Another reason for the ‘sister’ moniker is because my father frequently tells Missy he is really her biological father.

This is a fun joke in a small town…

With half a century of friendship between our parents, our own close friendship and the fact our daughters are besties – it’s just easier to say we’re sisters than to explain all of the stuff I just made you slog through.

So Missy turned 50 and we decided to make a weekend of it.  We decided to spend 3 days at Cedar Point – only, it didn’t really work for any of the 12 of us involved to go to Cedar Point for 3 days.  Instead, we hit Pittsburgh for 30 hours and let me say this – we hit it hard (I think).

The Five I’s decided to make this our last hoorah of the summer (we’re asshole parents – it was our only hoorah of the summer).  We started with Cal’s 1st Junior High football game – it was a win (8-6).  The important things to know about this part of the weekend are: he’s a tight end, he played every snap on offense, had 2 targets (neither for completions) but blocked like a beast and opened the hole which allowed the 2-point conversion.  OH! and the showers at the gym weren’t working – we drove to Pittsburgh with a bunch of stank.

Our first stop was Skyzone – because the trampoline in our backyard isn’t sufficient – we had to spend $58 for an hour of listening to our kids bitch about other kids jumping “in our area”.  I have not an inkling of how much money the Skyzone ‘team members’ are paid – but I can tell you, it ain’t enough.  We cut out after 50 minutes (keep the change Skyzone – use it for drool cups for your employees).

Our next stop was the hotel – to get the boy showered and meet up with the birthday girl and her brood.  These people are some of my favorite people on Earth – Missy, Gary, their daughter Carlie, sons Josh and Wes, and sons’ significant others Leah and JJ (who also goes by Janette.  This causes me a tremendous amount of stress because I don’t know which she prefers so I mix it up – I put WAY too much thought into mixing it up, though… I’m gonna hafta pick one soon and just stick with it, for my own mental fortitude).

I had the genius idea of all 12 of us taking part in an escape room; have you seen these?  You get locked in a room for an hour and have to solve puzzle(s) to get out.  Sounds fun, right?  Yeah, well… Josh went a step further, “…here’s one called ‘daring escapes’ – there’s a zombie in the room with you…”  Why any of us thought that sounded like a good idea – I’ll never know.

Once Cal was (for the most part) stink free – we all took the elevator down to set out for the escape room and literally… the 12 of us walked in circles for about 5 minutes trying to get the hell out of the hotel.  Nobody could remember how to get to the damned parking garage.  I ran in to Dan once and I think I saw a few others collide – for chrissake we couldn’t even get out of a free roaming hotel –  this did not bode well for the zombie escape adventure.

Finally we got to our cars (I still have no idea how….) and arrived at the escape room a few minutes late (those of you who know us and the Shetters are sitting there thinking, “shocking”).  As the “tour guide” explained the ins and outs of our mission – the zombie screamed and banged on the  wall behind us – the group of 12 quickly dropped to a group of 10 (Cal and Abby were out).  We went in, the “door” (which the 2 sissies could see through) was locked and we went to work.  …scared the ever luvin shit outta me when that zombie came out of a closet.  She was chained to the wall – every 5 minutes that passed without us unlocking the door – she got another foot of chain.

This woman screamed – and I mean – screamed bloody murder for a full hour.  She crawled around on her knees and screamed and pulled on that chain; all while we tried to figure out why in the hell we decided to do this…  It was something.  Tons of riddles led to a larger riddle. At some point Gary determined clapping his hands mesmerized the zombie enabling us to move about the room freely without the mind numbing screaming – I was dying later, listening to the boys bitch about the clapping – what kind of weirdos would prefer the screaming????

Everybody gave all the credit to me, Wes and Josh (truthfully, I didn’t do a whole helluva lot but if they wanna say I helped, then by god I helped).  We made it out with something like 5 seconds left and with only one of us being captured by the zombie (it doesn’t matter who… why’s everybody always want to know “whooooo”).  It was a good time – we all needed headache meds afterward – but it really was fun.

Next up was the Pirates game.  First things first, though – we stopped at the hotel and all gathered in the boys’ room for a coupla beers and ibuprofen (ugh that screaming zombie…); Missy went off to her room for a few minutes and I let everybody in on the surprise I planned – a birthday message on the jumbotron (I also informed everybody that while I felt Missy was worthy of a jumbotron message, apparently she wasn’t worthy of the extra expense of a “memory print out” of the message – my sisterly love clearly has a set budget).

Everything was a go – we just had to make sure Missy was in her seat in the middle of the 4th inning; seems easy enough… until you throw in the fact that I was involved.  I won’t get into the minutiae of how it happened that she was still at the food and beer vendors at the top of the 4th inning but I will say this – those of us in our seats were panicking (AND wondering where the hell our nachos and beers were).

Gary and Josh went to remedy the situation.  Only… it wasn’t a terribly smooth mission.  I’m not really sure what went on down in that concourse but – not one of them came back happy.  I believe there was snipping.  So when this popped up on the jumbotron:

Missy was busy hating everybody…

Anticlimactic: (adj): anything connected with turning out to be far less meaningful or exciting than was hoped.

The game wasn’t great for the Pirates and their fans (the I’s are mainly O’s fans so we had a little less invested), there was yelling from the crowd (ok… I had a few beers… it might’ve been me) and we left the stadium with a little less hop in our step than when we got there.

Gary led us back to the hotel and I’m here to tell you we hoofed it – “it” being the most indirect route possible.  It should have been a 15 minute walk, give or take – I’m not sure how long we did walk but I swore I saw the same paper boy in 2 different outfits.  About 1/2 way through our trek, Wes noticed we had dropped 5 of our people…  He and I looked back, said, “oh shit…” and kept walking.  I gotta say – not my shining moment as a parent considering I did not have Cal with me and Dan isn’t known for his attention to details – like our kids – in situations like that.

We finally reached our hotel – Gary cracked me up by ushering our girls towards the crosswalk in the parking lot after we had just jay-walked across 9 lanes of traffic including an off ramp to get into said parking lot.  We walked into the hotel and there sat Dan and Cal – they had clearly been there a while (show offs).  The rest of our group made it back about 5 minutes after us.  After a few drinks at the hotel bar I woke Dan…

The next day was Kennywood Amusement Park.

I’m not sure why I thought an amusement park seemed a good idea after a day with Josh (he’s a VERY bad influence on me)… I’m also not clear as to why my husband decided we’d meet his friends at 9:45am after a day with Josh…  Missy, Gary and Carlie showed up to the park at 2:30 – they’re my kinda people.

I rode 3 rides all day …..one was a Garfield boat (I explained myself by saying Cal, a non-rider, needed me by his side; they’re my family – they spoke nothing of me possibly leaving him to fend for himself in the streets of Pittsburgh 12 hours earlier). Thank god for Missy, too – she rode with Abby all day; Dan did ride quite a bit, but looked exceptionally pale after one and backed out of another because he got nauseous during the wait.

Parents of the Year here ladies and gentlemen.

Happy Birthday Missy… we’ve got 4 years to recover…