Life Lessons I Learned from My Mom. Like Clean the Shower While You're Already Naked in the Shower.

p.s. Not my mom.

Breakfast supper qualifies as “real supper.”

Don’t buy it unless it’s on sale and you have a coupon.

If it’s on sale and you have a coupon but you could find it at a garage sale, don’t buy it.

If you find it at a garage sale but the stingy seller lady is crotchety and won’t make a deal, don’t buy it.

If the lady sells it at a discount, give it to one of your kids as his/her main birthday present.

Kids and their appendages have no business touching walls, draping themselves across couch arms, or eating brand name peanut butter.

Sneaking mom’s Jif is punishable by yelling. Or grounding. Or death.

Garage saling is a verb.

Sweet cereal is called “topping cereal” and is only used for lightly dusting a bowl of bran flakes.

Restricting sweet cereal for 364 days a year makes getting your very own box of Kellogg’s Cracklin’ Oat Bran as a present (along with your garage sale present) the Very Best Birthday Ever.

Be witty at all times. Even when writing school report titles.

BORING:  The Effects of Salt on Plant Growth

ACCEPTABLE:  Plant Assault: Salt at Fault?

BORING:  The History of the Potawatomi Indians

ACCEPTABLE:  I Wanna Be a Potawatomi.

forced leftovers (fôrst lĕft’ō’vərz) n., pl. 1.a. Food set aside before the meal to use for tomorrow’s supper. 2.a. Food deemed off limits, regardless of how hungry people are at the end of the meal. 3. A torture tactic set in place to discourage overeating. 4. The cleverest method known to parentkind of avoiding more weekly meal preparation and promoting sensible eating.

Dressing kids in their next day’s outfits at bedtime is an essential element of a lazy vacation.

Turning childhood commercials into oft-sung ditties that teach life lessons like “YOU [clap] asked for it, you got it, now eat it!” makes you vintage cool, not dorky old fogey. Especially if you're the kind of cool who had no clue the song your mom sang to you and the one you now sing to your own kids came from an old Toyota commercial. (You know you want to watch it now.)

You can thank my mom for that one now permanently etched into your mind.

Thank you, mom. You're the best. ♡

If you like my mom's style...

Read about the time my mom made me read movie subtitles and I cried while wearing a scrunchie.

And read about the time I wrote The MOM Essay back when I was cool and wore jelly bracelets as fake braces.

Fake mom image courtesy of imagerymajestic at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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