Give Us Dirty Laundry

Lh9_(5970963447)I feel sorry for the Cannings.

You know who they are. They’re the New Jersey family that made international headlines last week when their teenage daughter, Rachel, took her parents to court in an effort to get them to pay her school tuition, even though she moved out of their house in October.

Rachel accuses her mom of being the source of her battle with anorexia (she says she called her “fat” and “porky”) and her dad of inappropriate acts of affection (like kissing her on the cheek in public).

Her parents claim their 18-year-old daughter constantly overstepped the boundaries they had set for her – by staying out late, drinking alcohol and dating a boy of whom they did not approve. She’d also been suspended from her Catholic high school a couple of times.

The family appeared together in court last week, although they sat at separate tables with their attorneys, and the parents at one point were photographed mopping tears from their faces with Kleenex.

It’s just so sad.

That’s all I could think when I looked at those pictures online was how sad it was that the pretty common trials and tribulations of being and raising a teenager were now public fodder for online forums.

Scrolling through the long thread of comments under just one Star Ledger article on the case, I noticed posters were quick to point the finger of blame at just about everyone involved – from Rachel, to her parents to the family who took her in after she left home.

Even the Star Ledger was taken to task for posting photos grabbed off Facebook of Rachel wearing a bikini (which I did not find lurid but instead just a cute picture of her snuggling a seal during a family vacation in the Bahamas).

And because many folks who post comments online are the trolls of the Internet, lurking under the cloak of anonymity to spread vitriol wherever possible, so much of what’s being posted is mean and downright self-righteous.

Posters call Rachel “troubled,” the family “dysfunctional” and the father of the friend Rachel is staying with – who happens to be an attorney who’s fronting her legal bills – “creepy.”

One poster wonders about the Cannings, “If they were such a wonderful family how did they end up with such a self-absorbed entitled daughter who didn’t want to respect her parents?”

Another commenter posted, “The parents should have done a better job at raising this child, they were definitely a dysfunctional family.”

Ouch.

Have none of these holier-than-thou commenters ever lived with, raised or spent time as a teenager?

If they had done any one of those things, they would know that it is NOT easy. Who are any of us to judge?

I don’t know about you, but I would not want the intimate details of my family life – my struggles raising my teenagers in particular – splashed all over the Internet.

I mean, okay, I do my fair share of writing about personal stuff on this blog but I promise you, you don’t know the half of what goes on around here.  And that’s how it should be.

Believe me, I know just what it’s like to try to live with someone who’s under the impression that the number of candles on a birthday cake gives him or her the right to do whatever s/he pleases, house rules be damned.

I think the Cannings just wanted the best for Rachel and her sisters and thought they, in turn, were doing their best for them. Just like the rest of us.

I think that some kids are just more difficult than others and Rachel might be one of those.  I have some experience with that.

I had separate discussions with both of my daughters recently about the Cannings and thought it was interesting that neither jumped to Rachel’s defense. They were both kind of like, “What?”

“Every kid’s got, like, rules they have to live with,” observed my 20-year-old. “Nobody likes it, but that’s just the way it is.”

My younger daughter, who’s 16 and still at a stage where the less syllables she has to use in a conversation with me the better, just said of Rachel’s plight, “That’s stupid.”

And I agree, the Cannings’ disagreements with their daughter – ones I bet a lot of us have had with our own kids – just got out of control.

I hope they can figure out a way to work things out and that Rachel moves home because that’s where she belongs.

And if one of my kids tries to run away and live with a friend, to those parents I say: Please, don’t do my child any favors.

The ‘Shizzness’ of Being a Mom

P1000060It happened at the stroke of midnight, just a few hours ago, the vanishing of one of my two remaining teenagers. In the blink of an eye and the tick of a minute hand, my oldest daughter turned 20 while I slept.

She joined her brother, now 21, in what I guess could be categorized as young adulthood (with the caveat that both are very much still on their folks’ dime), leaving one teen in my life.

It wasn’t that long ago that I lived in a house bulging with three teenagers, the walls barely containing all the hormones and angst radiating off of my children, like the ever-present stinky waves that surrounded Pigpen.

Teenage angst emanates off my kids like the stinky waves surrounding Pigpen.

Teenage angst emanates off my kids like the stinky waves surrounding Pigpen.

And I have to say, I am surprised to find myself the mother of two kids that are in their 20s.

In a way, I defined myself as being the mom of so many teenagers. Their assorted issues dominated my thoughts and much of my time in therapy as I struggled to navigate the choppy waters of growing up. Again.

Worrying about how late to let them stay up on school nights and whether they were getting enough fiber quickly morphed into weekend midnight curfews and  battling underage drinking.

All the stuff that clogs the highways that get you from the Point A of childhood to the Point B that is adulthood, the things I thought I’d said good-bye and good luck to many moons ago, became a part of my everyday landscape: broken hearts, driving tests, SATs, pimples, high school sports, college essays, prom dresses, boutonnieres, after school jobs, queen bees, lunch tables, eyeliner and AP Calculus.

Just when I never thought any of it would end, we seem to have rounded a corner. The end, of this chapter anyway, is in sight. And that’s what has me feeling slightly melancholy on this 20th anniversary of the birth of my second child.

Three years ago, when I had a junior and senior in high school, and an eighth and second grader, it seemed like I’d never get through it all. There were days I thought I would drown underneath everything that needed to happen (see the long list above) and all the FEELINGS in my house.

And now here we are. Two kids away in college and another is well on her way. Pretty soon things like resumes, internships, roommates and first apartments will become an integral part of our vernacular.

Just when I was starting to get a handle on all the other stuff.

And honestly, it’s making me feel kind of old. Having half of my kids now in their 20s is actually making me slightly nostalgic for teenagers.

I know, crazy, right?

And then as if by luck, my 11-year-old son came into my room bright and early this morning to announce he was having a hard time breathing and let me return to a place I know best: being the mother of a child.

So for the umpteenth time, I ushered a kid into my small bathroom and turned the shower knob to its hottest setting and let the steamy mist fill the room. I slipped out to get him a pillow and blanket so he could get cozy on the tile floor, and we sat and waited for his breathing to ease up.

Later, after I set him up in my bed to watch Cartoon Network with some ice water and Motrin and called the school and the doctor, I told him I thought he had the croup again and suggested we try the nebulizer before heading out to see the pediatrician.

“Why aren’t you a doctor?” my son asked. “You seem like you know all this shizzness.”

And in many ways he’s right. Four kids and 20 years later, I am an expert on changing the most explosive of diapers, could diagnosis a croupy cough coming from three rooms away and have been known to breastfeed a baby while browning ground turkey for tacos.

I was that good.

And now, where has it gotten me?

Because just when you get the lay of the land, know exactly what needs to be done in a variety of situations, it’s time to get in your boat and set sail again.

Pretty soon I’ll be shoving off for parts unknown and will need to develop a whole new set of skills to survive all that waits somewhere just around the bend.

But until then, I need to go pick up all the Legos my little guy left scattered around the den before I made him go upstairs to take a good, long nap.

I’m keeping one foot firmly planted in childhood for as long as I can.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Missing Teeth, Losing Kids and an Ode to the Minivan

The view during a snow shoe hike with a friend Sunday morning that took the edge off missing teeth and children.

The view during a snow shoe hike with a friend Sunday morning that took the edge off missing teeth and misplaced children.

Usually here on Sundays I do a little Week in Review thing cleverly disguised as just another post.

Really, I consider it a value-added day because not only do I usually tell a little story but I point out other posts I had written throughout the week that you might not have known existed, slipping through the Facebook cracks between suggested posts for Sparkle paper towels and what state people are told by a quiz they should be living in. Or maybe you just never got around to opening the email.

Just looking to help a sister (or brother, as is sometimes the case) out.

But after losing my fucking tooth last night, and really needing to make a very short story quite long, there wasn’t really room to tack on the requisite posts from earlier in the week. I mean, since this blog is written and posted on the Internet, there is actually an infinite amount of space, but I’m already pretty chatty — I use way too many words when writing these things, — and studies show that people reading anything online can deal with about 300-400 words at a sitting and until they click over to somewhere else.

I tend to run a little longer than that.

Anyway, now that I’ve really warmed you up and you’re practically begging for more (or conversely, ready to click over to Facebook), here are some of the very exciting things that have been happening in my life over the last seven days including the humiliating loss of a tooth, a rage against Valentine’s Day and a love story starring a minivan …

__________________________________________

photo-6That Time My Tooth Fell Out

I tend to have recurring dreams, with many of the same themes cycling through my brain, night after night.

There’s the one where I’m packing a suitcase or boarding an airplane. I always seem to be taking off and never landing. (READ MORE … )

 

__________________________________________

IMG_3118Valentine’s Day is Stupid

I am not a festive person. I do not come from festive people.

As such, I do not own colorful sweaters, necklaces that light up like Christmas tree lights or candy cane earrings.

It used to bum my children out that I didn’t want to create a cemetery in our front yard for Halloween or string twinkly lights in the front bushes in December. Isn’t it enough I buy costumes and put up a tree? Can’t they be happy with a wreath?

Seriously. (READ MORE … )

__________________________________________

800px-08_Chrysler_Town_&_Country_TouringPutting the Sexy Back in Minivans

You might have read here that I am on a quest to bring the minivan back.

I’ve been rocking my Town & Country rental all week.

Since I started driving my shiny white beautyfollowing a little run-​​in with a tractor-​​trailer, I’ve started thinking a lot about – given all the vehicle’s bells and whistles, not to mention roominess – why so many of us parents insist on driving around the suburbs in big rigs. (READ MORE … ) 

__________________________________________

IMG_3742Am I Stupid?

It happened again this week. For maybe the fifth time in his life, I left my youngest child some place he wasn’t supposed to be.

And he’s getting tired of it and frankly, I can’t say I really blame the kid.

Someone should take away my mom license. (READ MORE … )

___________________________________________

photo-4Museum of the Fairly Ordinary Life

There’s a house around the corner from us, set along a busy thoroughfare running through town, which has had stacks of books piled up on an enclosed porch in front for as long as I can remember. The entrance is lined with curtained windows through which passersby can see mountains of books surrounding the room, piled high into the middle of each window. (READ MORE … )

 

What About College?

IMG_0557Anyone who has seen the Hungtington Learning Center commercial on TV — “Face it! I’m not getting into college!” – has had the pleasure of hearing a dramatic scene taken from the pages of my own life.

Let me clarify: I am lucky in that I haven’t had anyone failing out of school. The kids have taken rigorous course loads, held down after school jobs and gotten involved in things like “Model U.N.” and played the saxophone.

But I am starting the third round of the college search process and while I just assumed things would get easier with each consecutive child—that there would be some type of buy-in at the very least – I find I’m running into the same bullshit now that I did a few years ago when my oldest was a junior in high school.

At issue is the broad assumption held by my children that going to college is a figment of their mother’s imagination. They act as if the four-year academic experience practiced by gazillions of people in the United States is some crazy scheme I cooked up, akin to the notion that beets are delicious and NPR is interesting.

They act like where they’re going to spend the next four years is my problem. They have failed to understand that that ship has long since sailed. I’ve already proved to be a fair-to-mediocre student more interested in a certain boy than things like homework and studying and ended up in a big, state school filled with a lot of people from New Jersey just like me.

And I’ll admit: It’s not easy preventing my own dreams and regrets from getting caught up in the process. There’s tons of things I wish I had done differently when I was their age – starting with turning off the TV in my bedroom – and see their futures as a chance to make better choices. A do-over.

But if I can put all that other stuff aside, what I hope my children come away with is expanded horizons. I want them to understand that while this little upper-middle-class-suburban-microcosm that they’ve grown up in is very nice, there is a whole world out there filled with all kinds of different people and different experiences. I want them to be open to the idea that the possibilities are endless.

Because it took me a long time to understand that the ideas I was operating under were way too small.

I am most surprised that my third child has proved to be as resistant to discussing college as her older siblings. It was no shock that those two quickly dismissed any conversations that began with, “So, do you see yourself at a big school or a small school?” or “What part of the country would you prefer?”

They seemed to view every question I posed as a personal affront.

My oldest son and I took a couple of trips to look at schools, driving together across highways bisecting Pennsylvania and along the Northeast coast, and we probably shared about 10 minutes of conversation for all those hours we sat side-by-side.

That might even be an overestimate.

He’d sit next to me in the passenger seat, or if it was a really long haul he’d stretch out in the back of our SUV, wearing headphones from which blared some very intense-sounding rap music, drowning out not only any attempts at conversation, but the audio book I had downloaded for the trip.

There’s nothing like trying to imagine what it’s like to be shipwrecked in the Pacific or get a handle on characters’ crazy Swedish names with Lil Wayne and Eminem shouting vulgar and angry words in the background. It’s disconcerting.

But I am shocked that Kid #3 isn’t embracing my attempts at helping her find the right school. I actually thought that when her turn came to look at schools, we’d have a lot of fun going on tours together and talking about what we liked best here vs. there while lying on our beds at a Hampton Inn in some college town.

Those are the getaways I should have taken with her three years ago, when she still liked me.

I tried again to start a conversation about college at dinnertime the other night. She bristled as I wondered aloud if a certain state school might be worth looking at, and hissed, “I don’t know,” and I really felt like she was seconds away from barking, “Face it! I’m not getting into college!”

When I in turn got all snippy and informed her that the time had come, like it or not, to start talking about college, she agreed but then told me, “You just go about it in the wrong way.”

WTF?

And I get it: She’s probably feeling like she’s under a lot of pressure (first round of SATs this weekend!) and in a little bit of denial.

Growing up is scary and talking about it makes it all seem so stinking real.

The Huntington commercial came on early this morning, while my daughter and I bustled around the kitchen with the TV tuned to the local ABC news that comes on before “Good Morning America,” and the familiar, “What about college?” line seemed to hang in the air.

We both looked up from what we were doing and made eye contact and laughed.

“I am so writing about this,” I told her.

And if that’s the only satisfaction I can derive from this whole stage of my children’s lives – aside from the joy of paying for it – I’ll take it.

 

 

525,600 Something

tumblr_m5b3djsvv01qknpp3o2_250If I were the mathematical sort, I would try to calculate just how many hours there were between fall and spring semesters at the university that my two oldest children attend.

But as I have a hard enough time counting how many times I’ve squatted on a ball or lifted a weight over my head when I work out, I am going to bypass all addition and assume it’s been around 525,600 (which is a standard measurement of something according to the song from “Rent”).

How does one fill all of those hours between final exams and buying new text books, especially when one’s been forbidden to get stoned in one’s own basement?

Hmmm … well, there’s always exercise and then eating things like mashed potatoes in the afternoon or barbeque potato chips at midnight to balance any healthy benefits of that time spent at the gym.

Then there’s the new PS4 console in the basement that the 11 year old got for Christmas, which the older brother has probably logged more hours playing FIFA and NBA games on for hours at a stretch than the gift recipient.

And thank God for “Criminal Minds,” which seems to be like one never-ending episode playing at all hours in my family room and – while I’ve never seen an entire episode myself – I’ve gathered always seems to involve the removal of some poor victim’s eyeball or eyelid and earnest detectives trying to find the bastard who did it.

We’re starting the fourth and final week that the kids are home for break and it’s gotten so boring around here that my 21-year-old son actually volunteered to pick his younger siblings up after school one day last week. He’s also done some grocery shopping for the family and taken his little brother to the barber shop for haircuts.

Not for nothing, but I’ve likened this kid to the big brother on the ABC show “The Middle,” which is a thinly-veiled representation of my life, minus the very tall husband, and frankly I’d like to sue someone for infringing on my hard-won material.

Axl Heck is the classic teenaged oldest brother: He thinks his parents are “lame,” his younger sister a “dork,” and is always walking around in his boxer shorts, a habit I abhor.

Middle1001(I am sorry but at a certain point, even though I spent years toweling you off after baths and wiping your bottom, I do not want to see you in your underwear. We call that having “healthy boundaries.”)

Coincidentally, the TV in my kitchen was turned to an episode of “The Middle” while I was making dinner the other night and one of the plot lines of the show was how bored Axl was between high school sports seasons.

He’s seen in various poses in his boxers complaining to his mother about his plight while draped over the couch or lying on the kitchen floor with his bare legs propped up on the refrigerator.

“Why don’t you try vacuuming?” his mother suggests and before you know it, Axl is not only vacuuming the rugs, he’s working with the attachments and taking the job more seriously than school and certainly his family.

In a later scene the mom is lying on the couch eating popcorn and taunting her vacuum wizard with how she can toss a piece in the air and catch it in her mouth or even eat the popcorn off her shoulder.

“Nailed it!” she cries after gobbling some off her shirt and spilling the rest onto the couch, making her son crazy with the mess.

Oh, how the tables had turned.

It reminded me of how annoyed my older son was when he went to pick his little brother up from school last week during the polar vortex and found himself sitting in the parking lot for about 20 minutes along with all the moms in town in their SUVs only to learn that his brother had wrangled himself a play date and didn’t need the ride.

“BLERGING BLERGY BLERG,” he shouted at me when I called his cell to tell him the news.

He was clearly agitated but I told him to hang out and wait for our neighbor, who still needed the ride, only to learn five minutes later that he was invited to the same play date.

“BLERGIN BLERGIN BLERGER,” my son choked out upon learning the most recent development in the 5th grade social scene. He had clearly lost his marbles at having wasted all those valuable minutes in the parking lot approximately 1/8 of a mile from our house that could have been spent playing Assassain’s Creed or looking in the refrigerator.

He cursed his brother, the little neighbor and me for conspiring to ruin his life and stormed into the house to yell some more before retreating to the basement and the comfort of PlayStation.

Welcome to my world, I thought merrily as I returned to stalking people on Facebook.

I really can’t wait until he has teenagers.

And may they all be girls. Like, four of them, who think he is the most annoying person in the world.

It’s going to be fun. I’ll make the popcorn.

 

 

 

Waiting for the New Year to Begin

-2

My mom bought these bastards, that literally come in a giant tin bucket, online from Hahns Old Fashioned Cake Company in Farmindale, NY. www.crumbcake.net

I’m finding it very difficult to embrace the New Year and all the new things I resolved to do and not to do when it still seems like 2013 around here. Actually, you could tell me it’s still 2011 and I wouldn’t really be all that surprised.

The problem might have a little bit to do with the giant bucket of crumbs that have been sitting on my kitchen counter since Christmas (wherein some evil genius decided to completely eliminate the pesky cake portion of coffee cake and package only the sugary topping) that I just can’t bear to toss in the trash.

It’s hard to resist all their little voices, calling out to me as I make my coffee each morning. I hate to be rude.

But the real problem is that I am surrounded, day in and day out, by people who are still on vacation. My college kids don’t go back for two more weeks and now that the holidays are over, they don’t really have much to do but watch Netflix and play video games.

And make paninis.

Just when things started to get back to normal and the younger two kids returned to school on Jan. 2, a Nor’easter slammed New Jersey and deposited those two back on the couch with the older ones the following day.

So I still feel like I’m in a quasi-holiday, snow day, everyday-is-Saturday state of mind.

I did manage to squeeze a little bit of writing in between using my vacation days this past week to load up – once again – on a bizarre amount of dairy products from Costco, take a quick trip to Delaware to see my dad and play untold hours of Walking Dead Monopoly.

Here’s what I had to say:

————————————————————

babies pix-1Blast From the Past

As noted on this blog ad nauseum, I pretty much killed 2013.

By now, we all know how I launched a blog, went to a blogging conference, traveled to Greece alone and kind of, sort of, tried to date (okay, not the greatest victory there). (READ MORE … )

 

—————————————————————

photo 2How Not to Hate Your Teens

If you’re like me, you are finding that it’s not always so easy to like all the people who you’re living with. Much less love them.

At least once a day, I find myself in a combative situation or heated conversation with someone I gave birth to.

I even made that observation aloud to one of them this week, in the midst of one such episode, “This is not how people usually talk to me.” (READ MORE … )

—————————————————————-

And while I did not actually write this post this week, I did reference it on Facebook and folks seemed to like it. Maybe you will too …

DSC00672This is How I Miss Him

In the almost four years since my ex-​​husband moved out, there have been a few times that I really wished the guy was still around.

Like when it snows. Say what you will, but that man could shovel like a motherfucker. He’d be outside for hours, first clearing the driveway and front walk as the snow was falling and then again later, after the storm had passed. He’d clear a path in the back for the dog to get to a spot to do his business and when he ran out of stuff to shovel here, he’d start in at the neighbors’ next door. He never asked for help and we all stayed warm and cozy inside while he labored in the snow. (READ MORE … )

 

 

 

 

How Not to Hate Your Teens

photo(72)If you’re like me, you are finding that it’s not always so easy to like all the people who you’re living with. Much less love them.

At least once a day, I find myself in a combative situation or heated conversation with someone I gave birth to.

I even made that observation aloud to one of them this week, in the midst of one such episode, “This is not how people usually talk to me.”

But he just grunted and kept at it.

Not long ago, I posted a friendly link in the Facebook inboxes of my two older kids about a college coed who had fallen asleep (read: passed out) on a front stoop after a night out in freezing cold temperatures and was now facing amputation of one of her limbs due to hypothermia.

I saw it as a cautionary tale that I wanted to share with them so as to avoid future amputations and the need for any prosthesis. God knows their tuition bills are enough to finance.

I had also recently shared a link with my 21-year-old son to an article reporting that smoking too much cannabis can cause man boobs, which he thought was funny.

Apparently, he did not think the frozen girl was funny or valuable in any way because he called me soon after freaking out about it.

“Don’t send me that shit,” the conversation began and quickly ended with me screaming “Fuck you!” into the phone and hanging up.

I promise you: This was never a part of my grand master parenting plan, nor was the moment after I hung up the phone when I had to walk back into the kitchen to find my two younger children – 16 and 11 – sitting on stools and staring at me.

Not exactly the model of conflict resolution I wanted them to see.

Needless to say, the matter was discussed in-depth with my therapist when we next met and she helped me see that while I thought I was using the poor girl’s possible amputation as a teachable moment for my kids, my son viewed it as a message from me that he would be dumb enough to do something like that in the first place.

He was insulted.

And who knows, maybe the day of that terrible conversation I was getting my period, or ovulating or whatever it is nowadays that makes my hormones go a little crazy, which added fuel to the emotional fire.

But historically, he and I are good at pushing each other’s buttons and quickly making the other one crazy. We tend to jump right out of the frying pan and roll around in the fire.

And it’s not just him. I get into tussles with everyone around here. I like to joke that my little guy’s been strapping on his teenager training wheels lately because sometimes there’s that tone in his voice when he has to answer one of my many, apparently, annoying questions, and he’s given some sassy responses lately, too.

Et tu, my sweet young boy?

And while my therapist recommended things like having follow-up conversations with all the kids about the amputation blow up, meditating and making a jar that I put money in every time I act like an asshole (or something like that), I think I have struck upon the perfect antidote to potentially hostile situations with my kids.

Last week I picked up a box full of home movies I had converted to DVDs at Costco and was reminded – at least for a few hours – of how fucking sweet my children were. Are. Is.

Sure, we’ve got boxes of old pictures and photo albums filled with shots from Christmases of long ago. But to actually see the kids in action and hear their little voices – so young and innocent – and watch how we all interacted was wonderful and terrible all at once.

Like, how did we get from there to here?

In retrospect, some of the scenes are classic signs of personalities to come: my older daughter shy and hesitant in the hospital room meeting her new little sister but super-excited for the candy in her Christmas stocking; the little sister – at 4 – decked out in a kooky lingerie-inspired outfit and belting out some made-up song on her Barbie karaoke machine, pausing only to scream at her older brother to stop “annoying” her.

Total diva.

But to me, one of the most compelling moments of those recordings was watching my oldest son open his Christmas presents, circa 2001. He was in third grade and had just turned 9 and apparently Santa really thought he wanted a lot of books that year. But instead of disgust, he happily opened his deluxe Narnia Chronicles set and lifted the heavy Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire tome over his head in victory.

He was that sweet. And I knew just how to make him happy.

Sometimes I tell myself stories about my kids. “He’s always been this way,” or “She’s always been like that.”

And sometimes it’s the truth and other times, it couldn’t be further from it.

But I know that since I watched my son lift that Harry Potter book over his head, I’ve been looking at him a little different over this long break home between semesters. I’m seeing him not in a new light, but the way I used to see him.

The two of us went out to dinner last night and had a great time. The conversation was easy — we talked about everything from Breaking Bad to LeBron James — and there was never any point that I felt like I had to say something annoying, like “Put your napkin on your lap,” or “Use your knife.”

He already knew what to do.

photo 2And I’m reminded that even though he’s a lot taller and hairier than he used to be, inside — and sometimes maybe it’s so deep down in there you’d need an excavation crew to find it — he’s still that same sweet boy I knew all those years ago.

And I’m glad I found him again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twas 6 Days Before Christmas: An Ode to Stress

photo(84)Twas six days before Christmas and all through my house,

I’ve got so much shit to do I almost wished I had a spouse.

The stockings are stuffed in my mudroom without care

In hopes that come Christmas Eve they get pulled out of there.

The children will be sleeping until noon in their beds

While visions of PS4, iPhones and spring break trips dance in their heads.

 And Mama in her scrunchie, with piles of lists on her lap,

Is hiding in bed, sipping a nightcap.

And so, my friends, that’s all the cleverness I can muster because I’ve got to get to the outlets, yo, for some last-minute gifts. And the grocery store. The liquor store. The post office. Dry cleaner.

Oh, and work. I’ve got that job.

Any attempt to blog this week has been sidelined by the Internet, ironically. I’ll quickly pop over to Firefox to, in theory, check my emails and all of a sudden I’m ordering something on Amazon and admiring folks Christmas trees and cats on Facebook.

But whilst trolling Facebook, I did come across the following ad from Apple and, as the mother of a reformed teen age boy who has been known to have his nose in his smartphone, it just resonated with me.

It’s not easy being a teenager, or the mom of a teenager, and I think we probably have no idea what those darling creatures are thinking most of the time. And while none of my kids have ever produced such a clever and moving video, they have endured many a family gathering over the years and sometimes even smiled.

Get out your tissues and some wrapping paper while you’re at it so at least you’re doing something about getting ready for next week while surfing the web.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImlmVqH_5HM

 

 

 

Offensive Driving

DSC02004

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. 25-Dec. 1

photo(43)Usually, I try to be clever here.

On Sundays, I like to come up with a little song-and-dance routine to tempt you to keep reading and maybe help you discover something you might have missed last week. Some little gem that escaped you as you scrolled through all the Black Friday e-mails and updates from Twitter.

But I’m too tired for that today.

I just said good-bye to my two college kids, who drove off on their eight-hour trek south back to school.

It was an emotionally draining week, having everyone home and truly feeling the weight of being the parent to four children.

It’s exhausting.

And while I might not have cooked as many meals as they would have liked and didn’t greet them with our larders overflowing with Tostitos and Oreos, just having them all back and under my roof reminded me of the incredible responsibility I undertook when I went and had all those kids.

And I don’t mean to put this on them. We had a perfectly nice week together, for the most part. My big girl and I shopped for our Christmas candles and my son, well, I think we had a nice conversation or two.

It’s just that having one kid – much less four – is a tremendous responsibility and it turns out, there is no expiration date on worry.

After years of asking if other parents were going to be home and monitoring curfews, when your kids go off to college it truly is out of sight, out of mind.

You don’t go to bed wondering where they are and what they are doing. You just assume all is well in College Land.

But when they are back under your roof, you tend to worry more. And not just about their late-night activities.

You worry whether they picked the right majors, are studying hard enough, are getting along with their roommates and if you somehow could have done a better job teaching them everything they needed to know to get along in this world.

You worry that you weren’t everything they needed you to be.

But then you make them some pancakes and hand them some water bottles and they drive off and take some of that worry and a big piece of your heart with them.

And you go back to bed.

While I’m resting, here’s some stuff I considered this week to keep you busy until I can start thinking again.

——————————————————————–

ARAM BOGHOSIAN FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

ARAM BOGHOSIAN FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

I’m a Woman, Not a Girl

I’ve been a Bonnie Raitt fan since her breakthrough album, Nick of Time, was released in 1989. Back then – in the last days before I got married – I liked her bouncy music, rough voice and catchy lyrics.

Later, my then-​​husband and I saw her in concert and I think we went again to see her perform locally after her next big album, Luck of the Draw, came out in 1991. (READ MORE … )

———————————————————————–

IMG_0290Top 5 Things Bloggers Are Thankful For

‘Tis the season for giving thanks, and all that, and for my first Thanksgiving as an official blogger, I’d like to share what’s brought me joy this year:

1. Sweatpants: For the five years he lived in the house I live in now, my ex-​​husband shared a walk-​​in closet with me. He had one side and I had the other and everything seemed to fit inside it perfectly. But once he moved out, and took all his jackets and ties with him, my belongings seemed to multiply exponentially. Now, the closet is jam-​​packed with more blouses, skirts and scarves than you could shake a stick at. But if you stopped by my house on any given day, you’d find me perched at my kitchen island in front of my laptop sporting some type of loungewear. What better way to accommodate an insanely sedentary lifestyle than with elastic? (READ MORE … )

————————————————————————-

de1086df1000b12064e3dd511ed5571bI Survived Black Friday and Teen Angst, All in One Night

It started out as an attempt to humor my teenage daughter who had seen one-too-many Target commercials encouraging shoppers to prepare for Black Friday as if it was the Olympics of shopping.

Spurred on by the fun we had last year hitting a few stores in the early-morning hours the day after Thanksgiving, coupled with all of those savings she envisioned (she has tons of her own money and is indeed a thrifty shopper), my daughter was gunning to hit some big box stores late Thursday night. (READ MORE … )

—————————————————————————-

A handy way to keep up with me and all my worrying is by signing up to get new posts emailed straight to your inbox. You don’t even have to find me through Facebook. We are separate entities.

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.

And feel free to let me know if you’re worrying, too. It will make me feel better.