Mommy Rants - By Cara Potapshyn Meyers

Every Mom needs to rant and vent from time to time. Now that it is the unofficial middle of summer, with our “balmy” 100+ degree weather, it is the perfect time to get some “pet peeves” off my chest! And since the air quality alert is so high, it is recommended that everyone stay indoors. The time is ripe for my annual “Mommy Rants” blog! So, since it is so dang hot, I think I will first start with the “balmy” weather rant...

“Balmy Weather”

For close to the past two weeks, the temperatures here in NYC and surrounding suburbs has been either close to, at, or over 100 degrees. So hot, that watering my grass and potted plants for two hours in the early morning and two hours in the early evening still has left them shriveled! So hot that they are keeping the kids at my son’s day camp indoors half the day to watch movies. The early and late parts of the day, they are spending extra time in the pool. They did go to a Water Theme Park one of the days. I can’t help but think though; Why am I spending hundreds of dollars for my child to go to a pool that I could take him to and watch DVDs, which he could do at home? My rational is that he is with his friends all day, plus I get some peace and quiet. That, alone, seems like a pretty decent reason to me. I can also get so much more done when my son is out of the house. Okay, so now that this rant is somewhat rationalized, let’s move on to my favorite rant...

Day Camp

It is only halfway through camp and so far my son and the camp has “misplaced” (ie. lost) several items. The first of the “misplaced” items is two...not one, but two lunch totes!! One has my son’s name embroidered across the front in bright red!! How in the world do you loose two lunch totes in less than two weeks!? Knowing my son, the answer is entirely apparent. But don’t the counselors keep a small eye on some of this stuff?? My son also lost one shoe (yes, only one), a ratty towel (I hadn’t even noticed...the counselor brought it to my attention. At least they keep an eye on ratty towels), and a sport water bottle. Now here’s the best one: The camp also lost my son’s Epi Pen!! A medically indicated device that the ADULTS are supposed to be in charge of!! This completely boggles my mind! Since we are at our insurance limit for Epi Pens until the end of August, it would cost $150 to replace it! The camp told us they would replace it if they couldn’t locate the original. But this is absurd! Also highly negligent! And what have we accumulated in return? About 15 camp shirts! Enough so that I can throw out the small ones at the end of the season and still have more than a week’s worth for next year. If we send my son next year. I’m losing faith in a camp that loses a life-saving medical device! Oy! On to my next peeve...

RSVPing to Birthday Parties

My son’s birthday party is this coming Saturday. I sent out invitations about a month ago. As of the RSVP date, I received exactly 5 responses out of 21 invites sent. I am highly understanding of families that were away for one or two weeks and missed the RSVP date. I understand that this heat is getting to us all and we are all a little lightheaded. But I now have to track down, make calls, leave messages, and find phone numbers of the families whom have yet to RSVP! All this while finishing the final touches for my son’s party!! I even put both our phone number as well as my e-mail address on the invites, to make it even easier to RSVP!! I think I rant about this every year, and every year I think it gets worse. Along with not receiving even a handmade thank you card for a gift you went out of your way to get a party child. As Ms. Manners would say, “Tsk, tsk...”

Last, but not at all least...

Laundry, Laundry and Yet...More Laundry

I know I moaned about this several blogs ago. It seems that no matter how many bathing suits, SPF shirts, ratty towels, shorts, camp shirts and socks I stock up on, I still find that I need to do laundry every other day, for one reason or another. This time, the culprits are my son’s karate outfits. My son has karate after camp three days a week (nice, tired kid!). He only has two karate outfits because he only was able to take two classes a week when school was in session. Now he takes three. I asked to purchase a third outfit, but the karate school is out of my son’s size and is waiting until mid-August to place a large order for the Fall classes. My son is drenched when he finishes his karate classes. These clothes cry out to be laundered! So, after my son’s Tuesday and Wednesday classes, I do a load of laundry to make sure that he has a clean outfit for his Friday class. It is a good thing that they have a home delivery service called Soap.com. In this weather, I hardly feel like shopping for and shlepping home hoards of laundry supplies! I make a purchase online, get free shipping if I meet a quota, and in less than 2 days, I have laundry supplies on my front porch! Now how cool is that?! (Shout out to Soap.com!!)

Well, that is all the ranting I can stand to give at the moment, although I’m sure there is more!

Please feel free to leave a comment and let us know what your favorite Mommy Rant is! I’d love to read them all! Let’s compare rants!

Side Note: Today marks the official, second anniversary of my blogging for MotherhoodLater.com! I hope you have enjoyed my blogs just as much as I enjoy writing them! For those of you who are curious about what I wrote for my very first blog, I am adding a link directly to it. I must admit, it was probably one of the most creative blogs I’ve written to date!

Enjoy!