Random bits

Last week Bean said her first swear word (and I would like it noted that it wasn't my fault!). Husband walked in the door with Bean on his hip to find that Pup had an accident on the bathroom rug. Dammit he said. Dammit dammit dammit dammit dammit Bean parroted for the next 20 minutes. Luckily she seems to have forgotten her newest vocab word.

Our Thanksgiving holiday was totally awesome. We trekked down to Husband's mother's house for the annual eat-stravaganza. Husband's niece, who is six, was there this year and she was an awesome older cousin. Bean and her cousin played together virtually non-stop the entire weekend. It was really great to see. Their favorite game was one in which they took turns running from one end of the house to the other and then threw themselves onto a tumbling mat in a kind of belly flop.

The luxury of four (virtually) stress-free days with my child made returning to the daily grind of work/school jarring for me, and apparently heart-wrenching for the Bean. She wailed when we brought her to school yesterday, crying Mama! Mama! with giant tears rolling down her chubby cheeks. But as usual, when it was time to pick Bean up from school, she ran away from me, desperate to play with one. last. toy.

Last night during dinner, she sang bits and pieces of Jingle Bells.

On Swearing

My first year in grad school I roomed with a Biochem grad student. He was a decent guy, but his choice in friends was somewhat questionable. One guy in particular, let's call him Assface, was a real piece of work. He was your average let's-drive-drunk-and-crash-a-freshman-dorm-party-to-pick-up-chicks kind of guy. You know, a real quality character.

One night, as my roommate and his friends are pre-partying in preparation for a night of underage booty scavenging, Assface tells me that I shouldn't swear because, get this, it isn't ladylike.

Now, I am rarely what I would call ladylike. It's not really high on my priority list. But the reason this comment really chapped my adorable behind is because Assface definitely cursed plenty, as did my roommate, all his friends, and pretty much all human beings between the ages of 12 and 35. It was clearly not the cursing that bothered Assface. It was the fact that I was a girl who cursed/curses like a grizzled old truck driver.

So of course I told Assface to "F*cking bite me".

**Fastforward 7 years.**

I'm in the office of my boss, Dr. DNA. Dr. DNA mentions that her neice, who works as a technician in a lab on campus, has been having problems with a certain biochemistry grad student in her lab.

Is his name Assface? I ask.

Why yes! Dr. DNA replies. How did you know?

So I regale her with several stories of Assface-related chauvinism. ...and one time he told me I shouldn't swear because "it isn't ladylike!"

Dr. DNA considers this but briefly. Well I don't think you should swear, she says, but that's because I think there are so many more descriptive and eloquent ways to express yourself.

Eloquent perhaps, I respond, but when I say that all this insurance bullshit is making me balls-to-the-wall batsh*t f*cking crazy, I think you understand exactly what I mean.*

*Disclaimer: Actual real life response to my actual real life boss may have involved significantly less bravado and fewer curse words. p-value << 0.005

And furthermore

I decided I am also allowed to swear as much as I want until my house is fixed.

That is all.

Seriously, the cursing has got to stop

It does. It really does. But now I think I'm clinging to it as the last vestige of the woman I used to be before baby. I think I'm cursing more, not less.

The swear jar isn't working. Mostly because neither Husband nor I notice when I curse. It's so ingrained in my normal speech patterns that it doesn't raise a red flag 98.9% of the time (+/- 1 percent error).

The other day, Husband actually caught me (for once) using a totally unnecessary "f**k".

"You knew what you were getting yourself into!" I exclaimed. "You knew you were gettin' a sailor when you married me."*

"But I didn't necessary want a sailor for a 2-year-old daughter."

Hmm, good point.

*There may or may not have been some curse words thrown in there for emphasis.

Swear Jar, continued

ScienceMama: That guy is such a dildo.

Husband: Swear Jar! 25 cents!

SM: What!? 'Dildo' isn't a swear word!

H: I thought our criteria was stuff we wouldn't want the Bean saying at school. Do you want the Bean saying 'Dildo' at school?

SM: Fine. That guy is a phallus-shaped jerk.

Swearing update

On the 30 minute commute home on Friday night, Husband and I had to put $3.50 into the swear jar ($2.25 for me, $1.25 for him). At $0.25 per infraction... you do the math.

But to be fair, we were talking politics.

It's that time...

So this morning, as I'm getting ready for work, I'm bouncing the Bean on my hip and dancing while I find my comb. I'm singing.

"Take that, rewind it back, Usher got the voice make your booty go.."

Husband laughed at me and gave me a little scold for singing booty rap to my 9 month old daughter.

It's okay, I rationalized, because she's too little to know what I'm saying when I sing. But then later, on our commute to work, I'm thinking about when she will know what I'm saying. And it's not that far off. And there is a far more pressing issue than the occasional booty rap...

I curse like a G*d d**n sailor. I mean, truly. It is appalling how much I swear. My friends all think it's funny "Bean's first word is gonna be 'f*ck'"... But you know what, I don't really want that to be true. For one, my mother would probably disown me. For another, I like Bean's school, and I don't really want her to get kicked out.

"Husband, I think it's time to institute the swear jar."

We've talked about the swear jar before. It's on our list of bad habits to eliminate before Bean is old enough to know better. Like drinking diet soda. But that's another issue.

"Okay," says Husband. "What are the rules?"

"Well, how about a quarter for every swear word."

"A quarter?!" he says. "It's supposed to be a real penalty!"

"Trust me babe, I'm gonna be broke by the end of the week."

"Well, is it all the time, or just when the Bean is in earshot?" he asks.

"I say all hours outside of lab, whether the Bean can hear us or not. We gotta get out of the habit, so it's gotta be all the time. But there are too many things at lab that make me curse... so, yeah."

"Okay. Well what's on the list?" he asks. I laugh at this, but he's serious. "Like is 'd*mn' a curse word?"

"Yes."

"Well what about darn?" he asks.

"Not darn. But definitely 'd*mn', 's**t', 'f**k'..."

"And b*tch" Husband adds.

"Yes. And 'whore' for that matter," I say (I use this a lot in place of b*tch... like 'son of a whore'). "Basically anything we wouldn't want her to walk around saying."

"What about 'Jesus Christ'?" Husbands asks.

As a recovering Catholic, I take the lords name in vain quite a bit. "Yeah, 'Jesus Christ' too. I wouldn't want her walking around school saying 'Jesus Christ' all the time."

So there it is. The swear jar. It'll be full in a few days, I'm sure. We'll put the proceeds into Bean's college fund. Because I like a little irony.