I have been known to throw the occasional cuss word around. Not cussing for the sake of cussing, but for particular circumstances such as falling down the steps, or dropping a plate, or the many, many times when my daughter was a baby and she would have such explosive bowel movements that we would find brown tar all the way up to her neck.

I do try to keep myself in check though, especially around my kids. I have taken to using words such as, ‘Dang’ and ‘Poo’. They’re tame enough that I think I may have heard them in Disney movies.

I also try very, very hard not to use the word, ‘stupid’. I even try to monitor the shows my kids watch, so there aren’t characters or people calling each other stupid. To me, it’s just a nasty, derogatory word and my five year old son does enough to embarrass me. I don’t need him calling people stupid to boot.

But, last week my husband bought this computer game that was beyond frustrating for me. You have to toss this marble across a gargantuan abyss onto a flat surface. That’s it. But, I either couldn’t get my marble across the abyss, or it would fly through the air right past the flat surface, or it would land on the flat surface only to roll off. I could not get it, and as much as I wanted to let some choice words fly right along with that marble, I didn’t.

Though I did keep saying, over and over, something about the game and the marble being stupid.

Of course, the next time my son got a chance to play, he immediately began to say stuff about the ‘stupid game’ and the ‘stupid marble’. I quickly told him not to say it anymore, that I shouldn’t have said it either, because it’s just not nice.

And now the little rascal is trying to draw it out of me, apparently to get me in trouble with myself. Under the guise of improving his knowledge, he just asked me, “Hey Mom, what rhymes with Cupid?”

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Right around Christmas, my five year old son suddenly became fascinated with death. It started when we were talking about his grandparents and he asked where their parents were. I explained that those were his great-grandparents, and that they had all died and are in heaven now. When he asked why they died, I didn’t want to say some of them had been sick, since we often say we’re sick. So I told him that they died because they were old.

So, it shouldn’t have been any surprise when he pointed at an elderly woman a few days ago and said, “You died! You have white hair and that means you’re old. You died!”

But she was hard of hearing and just gave him a big smile, and now he thinks he’s cheering up retirees by telling them they’ve passed away.

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Our family is a competitive bunch. Years ago, before we had started dating, my husband and I worked in the same office. But, instead of getting files off our desks, we would race each other to see who could finish the daily crossword puzzle first. Usually, I won. Okay, I admit that I cheated by calling my Mom fairly often…but hey, a win is a win.

My husband hates losing so much that I once saw him chuck his club into a creek on a putt-putt course. And, when he coached our daughter’s t-ball team a few years ago, and they lost their first game…well, it wasn’t pretty at our house afterward. Though, he at least waited until our daughter walked out of the room before he said he was so mad that he felt like throwing something. His mood actually rises and falls with the score of his fantasy football team.

The latest competitive activity in our house is Speed Stacks. If you haven’t seen it, you should watch this. Not only do you need dexterity and coordination, you need to be fast. They don’t include a timer for nothing. As of now, our daughter is the quickest, but we’re gaining on her. Well, my husband is. I can’t cheat my way to winning this.

Apparently, our five year old son is starting to take after his Dad. Because the other night, our boy stopped playing, grabbed at his pants, and as he ran to the bathroom, he yelled, “I’m going to go pee! TIME ME!”

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I just told my daughter that I needed a cheery and light-hearted idea for a blog post. I mentioned that things get chaotic this time of year, and people may need something to make them stop and smile.

She said, “Well, why don’t you talk about how stressed you are at work? Or, how you were so busy yesterday, that you ate chocolate-covered popcorn for lunch?” (Okay, in my defense it was the only food we had at the office. Well…that and Triscuits, which should really only be fed to a cow, because technically they’re nothing more than weaved hay.)

I told her that talking about my stress and poor eating habits wouldn’t qualify as light-hearted.

She then suggested, “How about telling everyone about how I’m reading the Diary of Anne Frank?”

I’m thinking she doesn’t quite get what I’m going for.

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