The Hit List - Mother Knows BeSt

When my children were still children, I was the killjoy mom who embarrassed them and ruined their fun with my intuitive brand of parenting. I would nix friendships or events based on “bad vibes”.

Never mind that they would eventually begrudgingly admit I was right. They still hated it.

As they became adults, I backed off. A lot. My goal was to stop my Scorpionic Joan Crawford ways and allow them to live their lives as they saw fit. They didn’t need my windy criticism nor intuitive hits. I started to learn to curb my mommy intuition and shut my mouth.

Which meant biting my sometimes sharp tongue when my son brought his girlfriends around me (my son pre-warns his gal pals that I am “terrifying”). It also meant trusting my daughter who wisely didn’t divulge too many details of her last beau (I would have told her to dump his sorry ass immediately). Grown children sometimes don’t want to hear.

But then they do. Recently, my son moved into a place that is only a stone’s throw from here. I was delighted to have him back in my hood and excited to see this new place that he had been hawking on for months until it finally became available.

A few days ago, I announced I wanted to see it. He balked because the place was messy but it was too late – my Mommy Dearest side was calling and I wanted to check this place out.

(A note about my neighborhood: it’s a strange patchwork of good streets and really scary ones. It’s a block by block case – you can easily move from nice residential to robbery street in just two blocks. So you need to be careful living here. For the record, I’ve been here for many years and never had a problem.)

As I walked up to his crib, I was immediately overcome with a – you guessed it – bad vibe. I went inside and could barely contain my fear. The energy was what I call “stabby robby rapey” and made it difficult for me to breathe. I didn’t want to freak my son out nor did I want to act like the disapproving mom so I just made some lame remarks about putting up better security and got out of there, pronto.

When I left, I told my husband that this place was going to be robbed. I could feel it in my bones. (Notes: 1. My spidey sense for danger is always right on. When something or someone is really bad, I’m always right on the money. I’m probably better at smelling that vibe than anything else. 2. I wanted to be a cop back in the day.)

And bada bing – two days later, my son’s car window was smashed in and his car was rifled through (oddly, they only took condoms). When my son called me to tell me what happened, I finally confessed my true feelings and told him he needed to leave that hell hole immediately. (Son will be packing this week and getting the eff outta there.)

After this incident, both of my children told me that if I ever get another third eye blast like that, I now have full permission to blab away. Let’s see if they feel the same when they bring their new paramours around me again.

Other stuff:

Um….Adam Levine…..yeah, THIS.

My new mantra: I will not read any more stuff about Corey Feldman.

I adore the Bloggess. This post cracked me up. Her take on social media? Hilarious and spot on.

I was talking about James Deen in yoga class. My daughter, who loves anything retro, thought I was talking about James Dean the actor. Nope, I was chatting about James Deen, the porn actor. I read this interview and found him fascinating. Apparently, he’s the “Ryan Gosling” of porn. I’m not into either so I’ll pass.

I am knee deep into Money, A Love Story: Untangle Your Financial Woes and Create the Life You Really Want by Kate Northrup and it’s really good. No matter what your relationship to money, this is worth reading.

Do you live in a questionable hood? Don’t live in fear – get this adorable yet dangerous kitty keychain from Pandora On The Hill and protect yo’self.

PS wondering about the Joan Crawford references? I have her advice book and it’s one of my favorite possessions. YES, Joan Crawford wrote an advice book and it’s hilarious BUT I learned a whole lot about time management from Mommy Dearest herself: