Why My Son Says, ‘Everything is Ruined’

702599_10151283017657173_124342937_nThe Elf didn’t start out as a thorn in my side.

At first, he actually helped keep my then-preschooler – and the youngest of my four children – in line.

If my son put up a fuss about going to bed at the appointed hour or carried on in Target about not getting a toy he totally wanted (“PLLLLLLLEASE, MOM.”), I’d have to pull the old Elf card out of my back pocket.

“I’d hate for Alex the Elf to have to tell Santa about this,” I’d say with a smile, looking at him lying on the floor of the toy aisle, and then usually, the tantrum would cease as quickly as it began.

Problem solved.

I am well past negotiating with children. Just do what I say, please. And don’t make me count to 3 (don’t ask but for some reason, when I start counting, my kids start listening).

I liked that I could bring Alex the Elf in as the bad cop around here when we had a situation.  Life is so much better when you don’t always have to be the heavy.

Don’t want to eat your vegetables? I’m really sorry to hear that, but I think the Elf hiding over there on top of the kitchen light is going to have to report that infraction.

Trying to pull one over on your mom by just wetting  your hair a bit in the sink instead of taking a shower with actual soap and shampoo? Dude, I know, cleanliness can be so annoying and eats into valuable YouTube time. But Santa only brings presents to clean little boys and Alex is sitting in the pantry, keeping track.

But as the years passed, the onus of keeping up the charade of the Elf became like a part-time job for someone who has a hard enough time remembering when it’s time to start cooking dinner or move the laundry along.

I am easily distracted and have terrible short-term memory skills.

By last year, my son would come bounding out of bed during the month of December and immediately start rooting around the house, looking for the Elf. More likely than not, the dude was still in the same spot it had been in the day before. Eventually, my 15-year-old had to intervene and started hiding the Elf each night after her little brother went to bed.

She got kind of into it, as many people seem to do and document with some regularity on Facebook. Alex the Elf would be perched atop the cow milk pitcher in our cabinet surrounded by stacks of plates and bowls or sitting on top of our oven hood.

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Apparently, Alex sometimes needed some disciplining of his own, as evidenced by this scene:

702445_10151301542047173_610540196_nAnd then came the inevitable: one day this summer my son opened a drawer of the pine hutch that sits in our family room, a piece of furniture generally of no interest to someone his age. The bottom holds all my china, silver and serving platters we pull out for Thanksgiving. The drawers are filled with placemats and assorted candlesticks. None of these are of interest to a 10-year-old boy.

But for some reason, he pulled a drawer open one day in June and found, to his dismay, the folded up body of Alex within.

“I knew it!” my son shouted, glaring at me with contempt.

As if I had come up with the evil Elf charade and wasn’t just a cog in an elaborate wheel of make-believe.

Truth be told, Alex was still hanging around the house Christmas morning last year and I grabbed him and stuffed him in the drawer before my little guy noticed the Elf was still in New Jersey and not back home in the North Pole chilling until his return to our house the following December.

I asked my son recently why he was so upset by the discovery of Alex in the drawer.

“It just ruined everything,” he told me.

“Did you want to believe?” I asked him gently, seeing his eyes fill with tears.

“I really did,” he said. “But now all I can do is pretend.

“It’s the best I can do, Mom,” he added.

Welcome to the club.

 

 

 

 

Offensive Driving

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You’d think I’d be used to it by now.

You’d think that by now my arms wouldn’t fly up to shield my head reflexively as we hurtle past parked cars and stop signs, preparing for imminent impact.

By now you’d think that I’d gotten used to how angry they become when I shout things from the passenger seat like, “Move away from the curb!” or “Slow down for the turn ahead!”

It hurts their feelings.

Listen, I’m just trying to get through this in one piece and hurt feelings are the least of my concern.

I am in the midst of surviving my third child learning how to drive and I don’t know if my heart, or my pocketbook, will be able to handle doing this a fourth and final time when my youngest gets ready to take the wheel in a few years.

I’ve already spent hundreds of dollars on a professional driving teacher who took my daughter out for the mandatory practice hours required to get her driver’s permit before she turned 16.  Now we just need to make it her to her 17th birthday which, if her last turn at the wheel is any indication, is not looking so good.

The kids and I had been trying to squeeze in a date to see “Catching Fire” over Thanksgiving break before my oldest daughter headed back to college, and we decided the only time we could fit it in was that Saturday night.

As we piled into the car for the 7:00 show, I decided that the driver-in-training needed some nighttime experience and insisted that she take the wheel.

Damn you, hindsight.

So, in New Jersey at the end of November, the streets are lined with large piles of leaves. For all you know, there could be a large crate of glass bottles, boxes full of nails or at the very least a super-sharp set of kitchen knives lurking under all that foliage.

Which it seems there was, because after my daughter plowed her way through four or five large piles of leaves – as she instinctively shied away from the middle of the road and hugged the curb – we heard a thumping beneath the car.

“Do you hear that sound?” yelled my older daughter from the back seat.

I quickly turned down the deafening music from my daughter’s iPhone filling the car with Daft Punk and heard the unmistakable cuh-cunk of a flat tire.

Okay, this is where I kind of lose my cool and get a bit hysterical. Fearing the dreaded bent tire rim, I started screaming for her to pull over. What I was trying to say was, “Take the next right,” but what was coming out instead was “Pull over. Wait! No! There’s a … stop! No. Go! Turn! Up Ahead!” so that the driver didn’t know what the fuck I wanted her to do and became equally, if not more, hysterical.

Katniss was off the table for the evening as we waited in the dark for the AAA tow truck to arrive to swap out the damaged tire for a spare. By the time we headed home, the bad driver already had a Plan B in place for her night and needed a ride to the high school football game.

This time I drove.

When I brought the car into the mechanic a few days later to see if the tire could be saved, I learned the gash was so big, I would need to purchase a whole new tire instead.

Here’s that equation: New Tire + SUV = Mucho Dinero.

It was just another in a long line of expenses my children have racked up since they started to drive.

We’ve had numerous parking lot fender-benders, so many in fact that I started to wonder what the fuck was wrong with my kids. Did we need to, like, wrap our car in rubber or something for the good of other drivers? The kids were like pinballs, knocking and banging our car off everything in sight.

In the last four years, I’ve had the police arrive at my door to inform me a car registered in my name had been involved in a hit-and-run in the parking lot of a local pizza joint.

I’ve had to hunt down a very nice older woman and fellow member of our beach club on a hot day in August to inform her that her shiny BMW SUV had been sideswiped by one of my children.

And one time an angry Cadillac owner called to tell me one of my kids had backed into his car while trying to pull out of a parallel parking spot. Please let the record reflect that my car comes equipped with a rear view camera that beeps if you get too close to the object behind it.

My insurance company probably has an employee lunchroom at its headquarters somewhere in the Midwest named in honor of my children and their driving gaffes.

I thought the answer to the first round of bad driving was a lack of experience and figured I’d remedy that this time by making the 16-year-old drive all the time.

But now I’m not so sure.

The good news is by the time my fourth child needs to learn how to drive, he’ll probably employ the same method he used to learn to tie his shoes and ride a bike: He’ll teach himself.

It cuts down on shouting and then everyone is happy.

 

Amy’s Week in Review: Nov. 18-24

Screen Shot 2013-11-24 at 8.30.59 AMEarlier this week I whined a little bit about having to keep things lively over here in Amyville. It’s as if having four kids, one cat, an exciting ex-husband, full-time job and a blog isn’t enough.

Now I have to do things.

So doing things, I am. (Apparently, I am also beginning to speak like Yoda.)

As many of you know, I gave speed dating a shot last week, which was sad and funny and caused me to drink way too much cheap red wine to compensate for the weirdness.

Later in the week I took my little guy to our school district’s big fundraising event at the local high school to see a Harlem Wizards game. Lots of teachers, school administrators and faces around town took on the Wizards and if you grew up in the 1970s and loved the Harlem Globetrotters – even if you didn’t really like the game of basketball (like me) – then this would have brought back great memories for you. There was plenty of slam dunking, shorts pulling and the ol’ tossed bucket-full-of-glitter routine.

landofthelost4It made me nostalgic for Sleestaks, Count Chocula and the Chuckle Patch.

On Friday, my now-trusty single pal sidekick and I went to see Bonnie Raitt perform at the NJPAC and I don’t want to say too much more because I had a ton of thoughts on that. Pretty much, I’ve discovered who I want to be when I grow up.

I just need to learn to play the guitar.

Then early Saturday morning, I joined a group of eight other women for – what turned out to be – a full day at the shooting range. I am kind of morally opposed to guns, too, which made the whole experience interesting and I’ll share more about that this week, too.

While you’re waiting with bated breath for these dispatches, let’s review what else I’ve been up to lately …

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On Monday, I began to rethink some of my parenting strategies. In particular, I wondered if I’d done more harm than good in sharing some things about my past with my children.

The most interesting reaction from readers about that post was not that I used to smoke or have sung a song about my cat but that I have a tattoo.

Go figure.

IMG_3256Young Amy: A Cautionary Tale

Over the course of the, like, bazillion hours my college girlfriends and I sat around talking during a girls’ weekend earlier this month, the topic of how much you should let your children know about your past antics came up.

One of the girls said that she had an acquaintance who’s like an expert in adolescent psychology, or something, and that professional advised that parents keep their younger misdeeds under wraps.

“You really need to live the lie,” our friend said. “But I’m sure I don’t need to tell you girls that.”

And as the rest of the group nodded along, all I could think was, “Oh dear.” (READ MORE … )

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Later in the week, I went speed dating. I promise you,  in theory, it sounded like a great idea.

photo(75)Speed Daters

Just back from a quick trip to the Land of Grim the other night and I’m here to report that love, alas, is not waiting for me in a New Jersey strip mall.

My also-​​single girlfriend and I drove about 40 minutes north of where we live to take part in a round of Speed Dating, which I think one of us had seen advertised on Match​.com like a month ago and neither of us needed convincing to sign up. (READ MORE … )

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As a bonus this week, I shared on Facebook how funny I thought that the following essay was consistently in my group of Top 10 posts each day. I think that Cheez-Its are being laced with something highly addictive at the Sunshine factory, but can’t prove anything yet.

cheez-itCheez-Its: A Love Story

It wasn’t until my ex-​​husband moved out more than four years ago that my late night nibbling began.

Until then, we’d finish dinner and maybe I’d have a bowl of ice cream with the kids (I was younger then and could get away with those kinds of things) and we would have eating wrapped up by 6:30 most nights. (READ MORE … )

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And I’d be remiss not to remind all you fine people that you can sign up to get new posts emailed straight to your inbox. You don’t even have to find me through Facebook.

Just fill your email address in the “Subscribe to blog via email” box, which is to the right of this post if you’re on your laptop or if you scroll way to the bottom if you’re reading this on your phone. Just keep scrolling, it’s there. Fill in your email address and then go to your inbox where an email will be waiting that you need to open to confirm your subscription.

Presto!

 

 

Young Amy: A Cautionary Tale

IMG_3256Over the course of the, like, bazillion hours my college girlfriends and I sat around talking during a girls’ weekend earlier this month, the topic of how much you should let your children know about your past antics came up.

One of the girls said that she had an acquaintance who’s like an expert in adolescent psychology, or something, and that professional advised that parents keep their younger misdeeds under wraps.

“You really need to live the lie,” our friend said. “But I’m sure I don’t need to tell you girls that.”

And as the rest of the group nodded along, all I could think was, “Oh dear.”

Because, as you might imagine — what with this blog and all — my children know a little bit about their mother’s far-from-stellar past.

And while I try to spare them the gory details — sometimes a lie really does need to be lived — I have made it pretty clear to my kids that I was a dope when I was younger.

I like to think that I’ve offered myself up to them as a cautionary tale.

Like, they know that I was an enthusiastic smoker until I started having babies. They know I am comfortable making my way around a fraternity tailgate and am open to drinking beverages concocted in sketchy coolers. Clearly, my decision-making skills were questionable.

And while I’ve been honest about these pieces of my history, I’m also pretty sure I have not promoted these activities as recommended habits of highly successful individuals.

Clearly, they are not: I am the single mother of four kids holding down a low-paying, entry-level job.

And I have a tattoo.

But I think that what I have done is presented myself to my children as a very real person, flawed and full of mistakes, and sometimes regret. They’ve seen me act like a bitch, cry, celebrate their accomplishments, dance like a weirdo and sing a song about my cat.

I am all that and a bag of chips.

I’ve told them that I wish I concentrated more on academics than partying in high school and college. I wish I had figured out what I was good at and followed that career path. And I wish I hadn’t been in such a rush to get married and have babies.

But I couldn’t have done any of these things because I simply had no idea who I was, deep down inside, all those years ago.

And I also think that’s why I’ve come so late to writing in earnest. As Ann Lamott wrote, “Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious.” And people, I was unconscious for many years.

But, as my therapist would tell you (because she tells me all the time), that’s all just been a part of my journey and it’s helped put me where I am today and for that, I would trade nothing.

Being a mother forced me to wake up.

And while I am not gunning to be the Dina to their collective Lindsay — I already have lots of friends, thanks — I do want them to know that I am a human who makes mistakes and tries to learn from them.

Of course, that’s not to say that I haven’t been called a “hypocrite” for grounding a certain someone who stashed an empty bottle of liquor (swiped from my own booze collection) under a bed. And when feeling defensive, other kids have questioned what I got on my SATs and mocked my math skills (which would probably never be great, no matter how self-aware I was as a kid).

They also have mentioned that they think my tattoo is ridiculous (for the record: so do I).

But I think deep down, they know I’m working really hard to make up for lost time.

Last Christmas, my older daughter – who was seriously broke at the time – ended up pulling out the showstopper of a homemade gift and shared what all this has meant to her.

She handed me a deck of cards and at first, I had to admit, I wasn’t impressed. Like, I don’t really know any card games.

But I pulled the deck out and saw this:

52 Things I Love About You

52 Things I Love About You

 

And this:

And then this:

 

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Wait, what?

And in that one moment, I knew that I must be doing something right.

My daughter knows so much that there is to know about me – my love of wine and Ryan Gosling, my “weirdness” and even my “goofy dancing” – and despite it all, she still loves me.

It’s not perfect, but it’s okay.

Honest.

 

 

3 Hazards of Becoming an Over-Sharing Blogger

photo(73)I am learning, in the almost-year that I’ve been doing this, that being a blogger is kind of weird. Like, you need to be okay with people knowing your business. I mean, you have to be really comfortable with the idea that a few of the people you’re standing in line with at the deli counter know you like to drink wine in bed at night or that your son’s teacher has read that your child sometimes has impulse control issues. It’s probably not great that she knows you’re drinking in bed either.

Luckily, I am totally cool with all of this.

But as more people start to read the blog, I find that I am running into a few of the same situations whenever I manage to tear myself away from my laptop and enter the real world. Forthwith, the hazards of blogging:

  1. You Have Nothing to Say at Gatherings: Because you are constantly writing about what’s going on in your life – what you’re thinking, doing, hoping, dreading, eating, drinking, watching, daydreaming – people pretty much know everything about you. I probably started about 10 stories when I went away with my college girlfriends last weekend, only to be either stopped mid-sentence with an, “Oh yeah, I read that.” I definitely need to develop some ancillary material that does not make it into the blog, just so I won’t be so boring at parties.
  2. Friends Start to Use Terms Like ‘Off the Record’: Not everyone is as comfortable as a blogger is with spilling it all to the world. And let’s be honest: I don’t share everything that’s going on around here. I get to pick and choose how I present myself to you people. Those around me aren’t always so lucky. Just ask my ex.
  3. People Want You to Write About Them: Unlike your children or ex-husband, who have already experienced the pleasure of being written about in your blog, girlfriends are always looking to get a shout out. My surrogate teenage daughter across the street is also looking for a mention (PS girl: Boom, there it is). But it’s weird who and what gets written about, the stories that I choose to focus on. Like, I write about my two sons a lot, but I think that’s because they’re the oldest and the youngest of my brood and tend to be the measuring sticks for my parenting experience. I also find I frequently reference my therapist, who I see maybe once a month, but have never written about the guy who my friends and I work out with a few times a week who dispenses lots of advice while torturing us with squats and lunges (we call him The Girl Whisperer).

In the end, these are not life threatening work place hazards. I’m no coal miner dealing with black lung or police officer battling thugs. The scariest things I deal with are angry teenagers.

I just need to work on some new material or I’m never going to be invited to parties.

Amy shares way too much about herself at ‘A’ My Name is Amy. You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter@AMyNameisAmy.

 

 

 

November is the Cruelest Month for Moms

DSC04220Anyone who agrees with T.S. Eliot’s assessment that “April is the cruelest month” has obviously never spent time trying to be a mom in New Jersey during November.

This week alone, my fifth grader has three days off. Three days. I didn’t even know about one of them until this weekend.

Out of the possible 20 full days of school this month, in our district the kids have five of them off and there will be early dismissals for another four of those days to accommodate conferences at the end of the month.

What am I doing with my 10-year-old all those hours when he should be sitting at a desk in a classroom learning about ancient civilizations or fractions or something?

As a former school board member, I understand the challenges of scheduling all those things that need to be squeezed in throughout the year, like professional development for teachers and holidays, and still end up with the mandatory 180 school days. It’s like squeezing Jello into a tube and having it ooze out the other end.

For the first time since I can remember, the kids have off Tuesday for Election Day.  In our town, residents use the two schools as polling places. In the old days, that used to coexist with the school day, with voters filing into the schools’ libraries to cast their votes. But now, no one wants folks to be able to just wander in off the streets into the schools in the wake of Newtown.

I get that.

Then at the end of this week, school is closed Thursday and Friday for the annual NJEA Convention, something I’ve had to attend in Atlantic City for mandatory board member training but have never really heard of any teachers I know attending. That used to make me crazy when the kids were younger, probably because I just wanted them out of my hair and to stop asking me what’s for dinner. But now with just two kids at home, I’m feeling kinder and gentler about the whole thing. It’s really just an excuse for the good people of New Jersey to take their kids to Orlando for a long weekend.

Then we have half days for conferences beginning the Friday before Thanksgiving and leading up to Turkey Day and Black Friday. That is what we call it now, isn’t it? It’s its own weird holiday celebrating consumerism.

Blerg.

If I was to stop trying to be funny for a second, I’d admit that I don’t mind having the kids around. Really. Not usually.

But I’ve got this day job that helps pay a portion of two college tuitions and the off-the-charts taxes I need to fork over to Uncle Sam quarterly.

I just don’t have the time to police the TV watching/XBOX playing/YouTube searching that some people I know like to spend as much of their free time as possible pursuing.

As fate would have it, I’m heading out of town for the long weekend to meet up with college friends and party like it’s 1988. Well, minus the beer bongs, cigarettes and fraternity boys. Pretty much we’ll sit around drinking wine and howling about the old days. I’ll come home with a sore jaw from laughing so much.

And this is a good thing, because even though I’m agitated about the November school calendar for my younger children, I have yet to come to terms with the full week off the college kids have for Thanksgiving.

Ah. Let the holidays begin.

 

 

 

 

Traditions: Old and New

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The Devil wears Hanna Andersson. And Barney is just a gift. Circa 1994.

I was agitated earlier this week when I got a text from my ex-husband announcing it was his year to spend Thanksgiving with our four children.

I had already committed to hosting the holiday at my house for my side of the family and was looking forward to the planning and execution of the dinner alongside my girls. We’ve had fun over the years peeling potatoes and baking turkey cakes side by side in our kitchen. I love how well we work together, how one of the girls slices the apples while another prepares the filling and then I sprinkle the sugary crumble on top.

It’s the ultimate team-building exercise.

But one of the things about divorce is that you wind up with a script of how things should go down henceforth. Somewhere in a drawer in my room there is a document that details who gets the kids when, in alternating odd and even years.

But in the five years since we’ve been apart, I haven’t really had to consult our divorce agreement for holiday issues. Things always just seem to work out around Easter and we pretty much stick to the Christmas script we always followed.

And Thanksgiving hadn’t been controversial because he’s been spending it with his girlfriend’s family. But apparently he wants to loop the kids into that this year.

At first I thought, “Well that sucks. Why would the kids want to go there?”

But after a couple of things that happened this week, I’ve decided it’s not really a big deal. It’s just one day. One meal.

I went to join my knitting group for a spell on Wednesday — and I use the term “knitting” very loosely because while we used to actually work with yarn and needles, now we mostly just really like each other and show up sans equipment to catch up over coffee for an hour or so.

We got to talking about Thanksgiving plans, as women of a certain age invariably do. Who’s hosting, who’s coming. How many.

My one friend, who’s about 10 or so years ahead of me in the mom game, announced that she and her husband were going to travel to Boston to spend the holiday with their son and his wife.

This is not the first time in recent years that they have traveled to spend a holiday with one of their three children. Last year they drove to the Hudson River Valley to eat Thanksgiving dinner at the restaurant where one of their sons works and this Christmas, they’re heading to Vermont with another son.

But it’s not what she expected, she said, all those years ago when the kids were small and they would gather with extended family in their home. It was their tradition.

“I always thought it would be that way,” she said to us gathered around the kitchen table littered with coffee cups and cell phones.

“But then, once you spend a holiday without all of your kids, you realize that you can get through it,” she said. “That it’s not the worst thing.”

And that really stuck with me.

When you get divorced, of course one of the things you focus on is the possibility that at some point, you might be spending a holiday without your children. You freak that all those traditions you carefully cultivated over the years won’t continue.

And sometimes it’s true and sometimes it’s not.

I’ve spent a few Easters without the kids and that was rough. I flew to California to spend the holiday with one sister and her family and remember just how sad I was to be without the kids that day. How sad it was to not be stuffing millions of jellybeans and pieces of chocolate into plastic eggs or finding the perfect hiding spot for a basket.

But the kids were off on some beach vacation with their dad and how could I begrudge them that? There should be some upside to having divorced parents and if that’s a trip to the Bahamas, so be it.

Yesterday was the first Halloween in my like 18-or-so years of trick-or-treating with kids that I didn’t have to actually hit the pavement. I was prepared to follow my 10 year old down the darkened streets of our little town while he and his posse ran from house to house filling their pillowcases with treats. But it never happened.

He had hooked up with kids in another neighborhood and by the time I got over there, the dads had been dispatched to oversee the kids while the moms were busy inside a nearby house setting out the fancy pigs in a blanket and Capri Sun pouches to distract the kids from candy upon their return.

I stood around the kitchen and drank a spicy blood orange margarita and chatted with the other moms until the kids started to trickle back in. They compared hauls and then ran around outside, playing manhunt in the soft October night air.

I finally pried my son away from the fun, gathering his yellow nylon costume off the pile of other discarded superhero suits on the floor, and on the drive home, he told me, “That was the best Halloween ever.”

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Twin princesses wearing sensible turtlenecks.

And I thought of all the Halloweens of years past, holding little hands walking up to neighbors’ doors and encouraging my little Buzz or Woody to say “Trick or treat” and thank you upon receipt of said treat. Of being part of the stroller brigade later, when the older kids could zip independently from door to door while we moms waited in the darkness by the curb with the younger siblings in tow.

And later still, when everyone wanted to walk around with their own set of friends, I’d be off in a million different directions, trying to keep tabs on who was with whom and where.

It’s evolving, this parenting thing. One minute you’re shouting at your little Tinkerbell to keep up with the group of trick or treaters and not run in the street and the next, she’s getting on a train to the city to see the Halloween parade and eat Indian food.

And whether you get to that point slowly over time or a divorce or other catastrophic life event helps accelerate the process, at some point, we all get there.

Traditions are broken or need to be changed. But that’s just how it goes.

I think the key is flexibility, and remembering what’s important. What really counts.

Because while those big holidays are great and go down in the photo albums and memory books for the ages, it’s the slow slog over all the days and weeks and years that really matters. Being there for the kids on a Tuesday afternoon in September when one is feeling the pain of a failed romance or a Friday morning in December when another thinks she can’t go on one more day.

That’s the tradition I hope I’ve created for my children that neither divorce nor growing older will ever break.

Amy’s Week in Review (Oct. 21-27)

WwosGrowing up in the early 70s, I remember long stretches of weekend afternoons stuck at home with my dad while my mom was out food shopping or doing whatever else it was she couldn’t do during the week with six kids in tow. I was never one of the chosen ones, the child lucky enough to get to accompany her on these outings, and was instead relegated to spending the long day with the rest of my rejected siblings rolling around the small room that served as our TV room back then.

Those were the days when families owned exactly one television set, that played exactly seven channels (including PBS), and if you were stuck at home with your dad all day during the weekend, that meant you were stuck watching sports.

And if anything could have made not being selected as my mom’s shopping companion any more painful, it was being forced to watch four hours of sports programming on a Saturday afternoon.

Talk about the agony of defeat.

And if you know anything about 1970s sports programming, you know you’d be facing a few hours of auto racing or golf or, if you were lucky, Mexican cliff diving courtesy of ABC’s Wide World of Sports.

None of it would ever interest me. I don’t even remember what I’d do to keep busy – maybe I read a book or pestered one of my three brothers – while our dad dozed on the couch watching whatever sporting events were on that day.

But I’d always perk up for the intro. I mean, how could you not find it compelling – the skier tumbling off a jump or the victorious driver spraying a shaken bottle of champagne, host Jim McKay celebrating “the human drama of athletic competition”? And of course, the iconic “thrill of victory and agony of defeat”?

It was grand and global and the exact opposite of being trapped in a small house in New Jersey watching sports on a boring Saturday afternoon.

I pondered the highs and lows of life this week in a couple of posts that were neither grand nor global. But it turns out, that’s how life rolls.

I shared tips for getting nothing done each day except checking a lot of Facebook statuses and enjoying the significant improvement in 21st Century television offerings here:

522591_379600385471432_307731171_n5 Habits of Highly Ineffective Bloggers

People ask me all the time, “Amy, how do you manage to get absolutely nothing done, day in and day out?” (READ MORE … )

 

 

And then, in a stoke of organizational genius, I scored a personal victory the following day, which I shared here:

photo(61)The Thrill of Victory

Although I’ve confessed to you all that I am a hopeless procrastinator and not-doer of things, I did experience a triumph in organization and planning yesterday that was really too good not to share. (READ MORE … )

 

 

And finally, I wrote about not wanting my 10-year-old son to masquerade as a murderer for Halloween, an feeling kind of bad about it, here:

photo(58)The Thwarted Ninja

The kids and I crossed a lot of things off our to-do list this weekend. We stocked up on milk and Greek yogurt at Costco, cleaned out about seven contractor bags worth of outgrown clothing, old magazines and Nerf guns from our closets and finally got around to buying the 10 year old’s Halloween costume. That last one was the biggie. (READ MORE … )

 

And here are some links I shared on Facebook for one reason or another last week:

Now We Are Five, By David Sedaris (The New Yorker)

50 Years of Girls Names (The Atlantic)

What American Accent Do You Have? (GoToQuiz.com)

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The Thrill of Victory

DSC04212Although I’ve confessed to you all that I am a hopeless procrastinator and not-doer of things, I did experience a triumph in organization and planning yesterday that was really too good not to share.

To begin with, while wearing pants with zippers and activating my new ATM card have not exactly been priorities lately, coming up with some type of healthy, homemade meal is something I try to pull off most nights.

And I don’t know if it’s because I’ve got less mouths to feed on a daily basis or that my day job has become more 9-5 or if I’ve really just started to get the hang of thisbeing a mom thing (I’m a late bloomer), but most days I have an answer to really the most annoying question on earth: “What’s for dinner?”

I had a work meeting yesterday about an hour’s drive away also snuck in a get together with fellow Jersey blogger and someone I wished I could have coffee with every week, Brooke at Carpool Candy (read her, she’s fun and smart and knows a thing or two, it seems, about swingers).

So, knowing I’d be on the go most of the day and not want to come home and have to chop, sauté or boil anything for dinner, I pulled out my shiny new slowcooker, threw in precisely four ingredients, and got it cooking before I left.

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I literally plopped in 5 boneless/skinless chicken breasts, a small container of fresh salsa from our local gourmet market, a can of diced tomatoes and chiles and a packet of taco seasoning. Legit, that’s it. Cooked the whole thing for 5 hours on low.

Had I more time, I would have cooked up some bulgur or brown rice to go with it (the former has tons of protein, too). But alas, I just had time to squash up 2 avocadoes I had lying around with some chopped plum tomato and lemon juice (no limes on hand) and plopped it on top of the seasoned chicken.

My daughter and I were pleased with our meal and quickly cleaned our bowls.

My 10 year old walked through the door from soccer and said, “It smells delicious,” but then was crestfallen to see my “taco chicken” lacked tortillas, cheese or anything that qualifies a taco as a taco.

“You really need to clarify what you’re making,” he told me, looking up from his bowl of shredded chicken and avocado a little teary-eyed.

But instead of umbrage, reminding him of all the starving children in Africa or how lucky he was to have a mommy making such nice dinners for him, I just let it go. He’s stuck living with women who prefer brussel sprouts to mac and cheese and turkey to beef, so he’s already got stuff to sort through.

And besides, I wanted to savor the sweetness of my organizational victory for a little bit longer.

 

 

The Thwarted Ninja

IMG_0642The kids and I crossed a lot of things off our to-do list this weekend. We stocked up on milk and Greek yogurt at Costco, cleaned out about seven contractor bags worth of outgrown clothing, old magazines and Nerf guns from our closets and finally got around to buying the 10 year old’s Halloween costume.

That last one was the biggie.

He had been talking about what he wanted to be for Halloween this year practically since last Halloween. Maybe it was because in this neck of the woods, there was no trick-or-treating last year thanks to Hurricane Sandy.

But other than my inclination towards procrastination, one of the things holding up procuring the kid’s costume this year had been a differing of opinions. While he is totally cool with playing the role of assassin or ninja with a full battery of weapons, I just couldn’t get on board with endorsing violence.

More specifically, what he really wanted to dress up as was a character from Mortal Kombat, and even though his older brother spent a few Halloweens walking around town dressed as a Ninja – nunchucks dangling from the costume’s flimsy belt – 10 years later I would rather not see my child masquerading as a murderer.

Even if it’s makebelieve.

Plus, they wanted like $65 for the costume online.

So after our Costco outing on Saturday we ran into one of those pop-up Halloween shops that mysteriously transform vacant mall and highway stores around here at this time of year.

Number one, I don’t know how people with young children are able to shop in these places. My kids would have had heart attacks as soon as they eyed all the creepy stuff that assaults you as you walk through the door.

Like, my kids cried the first time they saw the characters at Disney World. Chip n’ Dale had them weeping with a wave. And once we took them to the Rainforest Café in Orlando as a big treat and they almost passed out when it started to storm and the fake animals surrounding us came to life.

Anyway, we walk in and it’s just like a weirdo-fest in there, with employees walking around in creepy costumes and spooky animatronic dead things shrieking at you.

My mission was to get in and get out asap, but my son is a slow decision maker, especially when he’s being told to choose something other than what he wants to pick.

He drifted around for a while and inspected the big, rubbery Gru mask and the section with all the Adventure Time costumes (which didn’t exist in 2011 when he wanted to dress up like the character Finn from the then-obscure Cartoon Network show; we had to piece together the costume, which included a backpack his sister sewed using a YouTube video as guidance).

Then we came to what I like to call The Violent Section, which included an array of Ninja style-costumes and an extensive selection of weaponry (but, alas, no Mortal Combat). He spent some time inspecting the various daggers, swords and shields lining the wall before reluctantly moving on.

In the end, he quickly chose one of those one-piece skin suits in yellow that’s styled to make him look like a crash test dummy. He seemed pleased with it and it fit him so perfectly when he tried it on that it was pretty creepy how much he actually looked like one of those dummies.

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I feel bad that I thwarted his dream to be the Mortal Kombat dude. That I needed to control his fantasy. I just couldn’t endorse a character based on a video game that is known for its extreme violence.

A video game we probably have right now in our basement. My 21-year-old son has all those terrible games, but he didn’t when he was 10.

So maybe I’m a hypocrite, but I just preferred my youngest pick something else.

And he did, because he’s that kind of guy. He didn’t argue or carry on. He didn’t threaten to boycott Halloween if he didn’t get his way.

He just found something else.

Pretty soon it won’t matter anyway. They stop dressing up by the end of middle school and then I’ll just see pictures posted on social media, if I’m lucky, of them dressed up at costume parties in college. I saw my oldest guy dressed up like a nerd at a party last weekend and thought it was pretty cute. It got my Mom Seal of Approval.

But until then, my little guy will be stuck humoring me. It could be worse. He could have been a girl and then I’d be up against all the sexy fill-in-the-blank costumes that are out there. Then maybe I’d be wishing she’d cover herself up as a Ninja.

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