Do you remember that moment you became Cranky Old Person? I don’t remember the exact moment, but I can tell you it wasn’t that long ago. My husband? I think it may have happened around the same time. Just last night.

K: Dude, you know what would be so much fun?
D: (looking panicked) No.

What’s with the panic? Is my evil mind so transparent?

K: I would love to stand at the end of the driveway holding a hairdryer pointed at the neighbors driving at 700 mph past the house.

I would like to take a moment to discuss the driving situation in my neighborhood. It started with the neighbor kid insisting on driving in reverse at 30 miles per hour down the road. I’m good at throwing my kids into the ditch when someone comes hauling down the road but that means I have to be on my A-game all the time. And it’s quite the drama in the homeowner’s association.

Yes, we are in an HOA because our road is a private road. Which means we have a dead end and the county has turned it’s back upon us and it’s not as glamorous as it sounds. If I had the money, I would pay for the road paving and plowing myself and burn the HOA monthly minutes in effigy. No, wait. I already do that with the HOA minutes. But the HOA is for the roads, not telling you what color berries you are allowed to grow in your backyard and summarily dismissing the raising of chickens. All I’m gonna say is power corrupts. But back to being old and cranky.

D: You know….you can buy one of those radar guns they use for baseball. That way you wouldn’t have to hold a hairdryer.
K: But a real radar gun isn’t as funny as holding up a hairdryer. Now that is funny. Do you think it would slow anyone down?
D: No.
K: Do you think I’m a hypocrite since I’ve broken more speeding laws in exactly every state I have graced with my presence (47)?
D: Yes.
K: Does that mean I shouldn’t do it?
D: I didn’t say that. Where’s the Flip Video player?

Next stop. Slamming the door on Girl Scouts and writing mean letters to the Post Office about my relief carrier who refuses to pick up my stamped packages even when I remember to put the little flag up on my mailbox.

Did you RSVP to the party?

There’s gonna be a party.  Friday night at Blogher.  There’s room for Everyone.  All the info is over here.

If you can’t come, I expect to see you at the Virtual Party on Facebook and Twitter.  If only because you could win a brand new netbook.  You don’t even need to have a cocktail or chocolate.

You need a netbook, right?

A four-year-old on a riding lawn mower did it.

Do you have any idea what is more annoying than a four-year-old going “momomomomomomomomomomom?”  A four-year-old bopping his head to the music pumped in his headphones yelling “momomomomomomomomomomomomom” over the roar of the riding lawn mower to his mother who doesn’t have headphones because someone took all the padding out of the other pair of  headphones and lost one of the ears.

As an aside, do you know how difficult it is to lose an ear to a headphone that could cover Dumbo’s lefty?  I’m guessing it will turn up sometime during the winter as a sled.

I let The Boy mow the lawn today.  Before you get your panties in a wad about safety, he was on my lap.  Of course I would have let him do it himself if that mower didn’t have that silly sensor in the seat that requires like 80 pounds on it or the motor conks out.  Don’t think I didn’t think about loading up that bad boy with cement blocks but even as country as we are here, you really can’t let your four-year-old mow the lawn if he is riding around on a tractor with a Japanese motor.  Thus the parental involvement.

Usually I let him sit on my lap and then I steer but since he brought me a Sierra Nevada and put the bottle in the bottle holder because “that’s what the holder is for, Mom, beer,” I have increased his privileges.

So I put the blade down to 4 and I let him mow.  This pisses off my husband because mowing on “4″ is pretty much the equivalent to making the yard look like a big mound of dirt.  He would prefer that I mow on “6,” which means I would get to mow again in about 3 hours.  No, thank you.

The Boy mowed in circles.  Lots and lots and lots of circles.  They were perfect.  I was physically nauseated.  Then I saw the copperhead and I started to scream manically like a seven-year-old who just found out she got front row tickets to Hannah Montana and she gets to have pizza for dinner.  I used to be a bad-ass.  I remember those days.  Now I’m yelling like a lunatic about a foot-long poisonous snake that is, follow this, slithering AWAY from me.  And I’m on a riding lawn mower.  My husband ran around the corner of the house.  He looked at me.  He looked at the snake.  The snake looked at him.  He looked at me.

D:  You should probably just kill it by chopping its head off with a shovel.

K:  BUT I DON’T HAVE A SHOVEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

D:  There’s one right there (pointing to the shovel a foot away from me).

K:  I DON’T SEE A SHOVEL WHERE’S THE SHOVEL HAS ANYONE SEEN THE SHOVEL?

D:  Right there (with that look on his face like, “I-thought-this-one-was-a-step-up-from-the-last-wife-who-was-a-lesbian-but-maybe-I-was-wrong” face).

I picked up the shovel and killed that copperhead like the warrior goddess princess that I am.

And went back to riding around on my mower in circles.

Oh, it can get bigger than Mr. Big.  And you can say you were here before it all happened.

Now I am trying to throw a damn BASH at Blogher.  All those PR reps bugging you in your email?  Send them to me.  But only if you want a DAMN CHOCOLATE FOUNTAIN at the party.  Which is open to everyone.

I’m an embarrassment to my former self.  I used to be clever.  Just reading those arrogant words is making the self-deprecating Lutheran in Susie Sunshine cringe.  But I was smart.  I could figure things out before I gave birth to three children.  OK, so I lost my brilliance the second I became pregnant with The Boy.

I walked into the “nursing area” of the women’s bathroom at church today.  What that means is the lighting is low and the couches are comfy.  I looked down.  My cute maxi-dress that I put on this morning?  What kind of moron who is nursing wears a ONE PIECE FLOOR LENGTH DRESS?

Luckily I have no modesty.  It was the nursing area.  I apologized to the woman nursing her baby on the couch about how I was going to have to practically pull my dress up to my neck to feed my child.

Her: Oh my gosh, there are so few good nursing clothes options.  I might have something in my bag to help you cover up if you want something.

K: That would be great.  A bag?  I haven’t carried a bag since #1.  I just make my husband carry a clean diaper in his pocket and then I hope for the best.

Her:  You know, I might have a Hooter Hider in here somewhere (digging in her bag).

I’m sorry.  Did she just use the word “hooter” in church?  I mean, I know what a Hooter Hider is but it seems like you might be calling it something else within the hallowed halls of church.  And this woman?  She did not look like the kind of woman who is going to “Hooters” for the wings.  She didn’t look like she had a four-year-old who knows how to operate a bottle opener and offered a beer to his mother in front of his teetotaling grandmother.  The word “gosh” flowed off her tongue with ease.

She said “hooter.”  In church.

I looked down at the nursing cover she handed to me.  A nursing cover which was not actually a Hooter Hider brand and was actually called “The  Cover for the Nursing Mother who is Modest” or some other long-assed name that made me think, “Bad branding.  Bad. Bad.”  It was gorgeous.  It had this fabulous color scheme with huge flowers.  I would have loved to have had a comforter for my bed in that pattern.

Which brings me to something about nursing covers.  As beautiful as they are, I think they kinda scream “I’M TOTALLY STICKING MY BOOB IN MY BABY’S MOUTH RIGHT NOW.”  Or, my personal favorite, “UNDER THIS COVER I AM TOTALLY NAKED.”   Another thing.  Hooter Hider.  I’m thinking that if you are willing to refer to “The Great Nurishers of Your Child” as “Hooters” you probably don’t even need a nursing cover.  Or want one.   I am by far the most modest nurser in my family (Hello, Jen Lemen) but you lift up your shirt a little, no one knows.  No harm, no foul.  Unless you are on a United Airlines puddle jumper flight and you get into it with the flight attendant at which point you just think “Whatever” in lieu of making a stink and getting a lifetime of free flights or 7 million hits to your blog if you ever wrote about the injustices of “The Airline Blanket Smackdown of 2005.”

I walked out of the nursing area 10 minutes later. Thanks to the Hooter Hider covering my thighs, I saved the slacker woman looking for a comfy chair and not in possession of a baby a view of my postpartem clot-filled thighs.

Although she probably would have left the nursing area for nursers as it should be if I had given her a glimpse of either my hooters or my thighs.  I’m just saying.