TLC, TBH

T

Tylenol is a sorry excuse for a drug.

However, going through the motions of standing in front of the cupboard, opening the giant bargain bottle, rattling a couple little inert white beetles out, and feeling their heads and butts scrape down my throat to join whatever child-meal remnants I’ve most recently vaccuumed into my corpse is kind of a tiny staycation: I can’t answer the children while I’m swallowing, and I get to face away from the sea of untidiness that is my home for a hot second, out towards the neighbors’ mess instead.

Also, as far as T goes, there’s Ted. I’ve told the kids that if they say “Mom” one more blessed time something awful might happen. When they ask what that might be, with wide eyes, I just stare back with equally wide eyes and say I don’t know, because I really don’t, but I feel it (like the velociraptor that was under my bed from ages 10-12, after a friend’s mom thought it would be hunky-dory to let me watch Jurassic Park IN THEATER), and so I have suggested that now and then my children please call me Ted instead of Mom. Or Tim, maybe. I don’t care, just any syllable that’s less amenable to being pumped full of excoriation like an auto dealership blow-up advertiser doll, flailing its hands and hair before crumpling to the ground in utter defeat.

I feel that the inner workings of the name “Ted” offer little space for the least satisfied of emotions. The children don’t do it, of course, but it is nice to imagine sometimes that I have a name that will not easily fit an entire one-star review inside its vowel.

L

L is for Lollygagging.