Is it just me or am I hearing a glut of four-letter words lately? I have to cover my ears from this assault of profane language. The worst is the “D” word. You know the one. I can’t say it in a family newspaper, but it rhymes with riot.
D@%*.
Ugh. I despise that word. If life were fair, it would be the word that does not speak its name. Unfortunately, life is not fair. The D-word and I are on very intimate terms.
Today is Day 25 of my d@%* and the honeymoon is definitely over. I have lost 10 pounds and all my friends who actually eat. My family will probably be gone with the next ten. It will be just me and my protein bars.
I had a choice between low-cal, low-fat, and low-carb. I guess I could have considered lipo, but I have a fear of the fat coming back in unusual places, foreign places, places harder to hide with a sarong.
Low-cal is what I have always done in the past. It’s simple. Count the calories going in, subtract the exercise and arrive at a number that makes you feel hungry and irritable.
There are variations. Some programs convert calories to points. That way you need to pay weekly to help you un-convert them back to weight loss. Plus you get to hang out with people who talk endlessly about the stress of counting points.
Low-fat was in favor for a while. Fat has more than double the calories of carbs and protein, so it’s a good place to cut. The theory makes sense. After all how hard can it be to turn fat to fat? There’s no middle man. It’s straight from the ice cream carton to your butt.
Low-carb is popular too. The science behind this d#^% is that carbs are too easily converted to sugar. Your cells suck it up like a cherry Icee at 7-11. Carbs invite a sweet little rush followed by a sour little crash, then topped with a monster craving for more. That’s why you ate the whole bag.
I decided to try low-carb. I realize now that I’m the kind of girl who never met a loaf of French bread she didn’t like. But I could sacrifice for summer clothes.
Then I found out my thyroid was low. I was so excited. I could take a little pill every day and it would speed up my metabolism, give me energy, and make it easier to lose weight. And it was legal!
I considered blowing off d@%*ing all together. No, I would commit to low-carb. The pill would be the icing.
I was off to a fabulous start until I got out of bed the first morning and realized my normal breakfast used up my entire carb allotment for the day. Ugh.
I’ve missed the entire girl scout cookie season. I will miss fresh corn season too. But bathing suit season? Who knows? I may not miss that at all.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Xmas Cheer Whether You Want It or Not
Happy Holidays from the Payne household to all our friends,family, creditors, and door-to-door solicitors!
This is the inaugural Payne family Christmas newsletter, the one that didn't make the cut for the actual Payne family Christmas card. For good reason.
In honor of the traditional holiday letter format, this chatty "snapshot" of the Payne family will be stocking-full of clichés. It will also be written in third person, as if some ghostly omniscient narrator has been lurking in the vacuum cleaner closet taking notes,instead of just Jody with too much time on her hands.
The year went by so quickly for the Paynes. Here are a fewhighlights from Payne family scrapbook and maybe a notation or two from the Dana Point Sheriff's log. Jody claims she can explain everything.
January. What greater way to break in the beloved Windstar than by taking their first extended family car trip with three children? With a new portable DVD player from Santa complete with three headphones, exploring the California coastline will be fun and educational.
Note for next trip: Do not combine HWY 101, rain, a Harry Potter hard-back,and a feverish nine year old who says she feels fine. Do not place aforementioned ingredients directly behind unsuspecting female adult and shake. Do not, repeat, DO NOT add male driver who ignores "STOP THE CAR!" at high volume from dripping female adult. Think of vomit stains on ceiling of minivan as a souvenir everyone will laugh about…one day.
April. The Paynes decide that their next trip should be by air. They consider England. Then they learn of a place they'd never been to before: Orthodontia-land. It is an exotic locale full of the promise of shiny bright smiles and it costs as much as two weeks in the Caribbean—with no Montezuma's Revenge. They sign up for the package deal: no meals included but all the toothbrushes they could ever want.
May. Nine-year-old demonstrates same lack of kitchen skills as momby slicing hand while preparing food for scout troop. Siblings are very impressed with size of bandage and depth of wound. The ER doctor superglues it up tight, wraps it in enough gauze to TP a house near the high school and sends a bill for $1200. Jody is still getting friendly letters from South Coast Medical Center.
September. The Paynes decide to attempt a small remodeling project that, if ever finished, will bring warmth and joy to the hearts of all who visit. Mark, the floor guy, slices his hand on a nasty four-inch razor blade. He superglues the wound shut with gunk he finds in the back of his truck, then holds his hand over the gas burner on thestove to sear it dry. Jody, still smarting from May, does not suggest a trip to the ER.
October. The senior Paynes are invited to their first Halloween party ever. Work-related, of course. The invitation arrives with a pair of fur-lined handcuffs. Jody begins to wonder what kind of work her husband really does. He always said he was going to the office…The party is an eye-opener. Jody tries not to appear shocked. At the same time, she wishes she had a camera-phone. The guests have fancier dresses, better make-up, deeper cleavage, and those are just the men.
December. The youngest Payne is now 5, making all the children supposedly beyond the age of publicly humiliating their parents. The orthodontist has a huge salt-water aquarium of which the Paynesconsider themselves fractional owners. Apparently, over the past few months the Payne children have been naming the fish while mom reads magazines, paying no attention whatsoever. This visit they rattle off the names: the fish that hides in the coral is "Hider," the fish that chases other fish is "Chaser," and the fish that pecks like a chicken is—well, you can imagine. Jody tries to get them to change the name.They refuse and shout it louder. Jody only hopes the receptionist has her head in her hands, shoulders shaking, because she lost a contact.
It has been a wonderful year filled with good times and good friends. Good friends are especially important when you drive an old car that breaks down a lot. We consider you one of our closest friends. May the season bring you love and laughter. Merry Christmas.
This is the inaugural Payne family Christmas newsletter, the one that didn't make the cut for the actual Payne family Christmas card. For good reason.
In honor of the traditional holiday letter format, this chatty "snapshot" of the Payne family will be stocking-full of clichés. It will also be written in third person, as if some ghostly omniscient narrator has been lurking in the vacuum cleaner closet taking notes,instead of just Jody with too much time on her hands.
The year went by so quickly for the Paynes. Here are a fewhighlights from Payne family scrapbook and maybe a notation or two from the Dana Point Sheriff's log. Jody claims she can explain everything.
January. What greater way to break in the beloved Windstar than by taking their first extended family car trip with three children? With a new portable DVD player from Santa complete with three headphones, exploring the California coastline will be fun and educational.
Note for next trip: Do not combine HWY 101, rain, a Harry Potter hard-back,and a feverish nine year old who says she feels fine. Do not place aforementioned ingredients directly behind unsuspecting female adult and shake. Do not, repeat, DO NOT add male driver who ignores "STOP THE CAR!" at high volume from dripping female adult. Think of vomit stains on ceiling of minivan as a souvenir everyone will laugh about…one day.
April. The Paynes decide that their next trip should be by air. They consider England. Then they learn of a place they'd never been to before: Orthodontia-land. It is an exotic locale full of the promise of shiny bright smiles and it costs as much as two weeks in the Caribbean—with no Montezuma's Revenge. They sign up for the package deal: no meals included but all the toothbrushes they could ever want.
May. Nine-year-old demonstrates same lack of kitchen skills as momby slicing hand while preparing food for scout troop. Siblings are very impressed with size of bandage and depth of wound. The ER doctor superglues it up tight, wraps it in enough gauze to TP a house near the high school and sends a bill for $1200. Jody is still getting friendly letters from South Coast Medical Center.
September. The Paynes decide to attempt a small remodeling project that, if ever finished, will bring warmth and joy to the hearts of all who visit. Mark, the floor guy, slices his hand on a nasty four-inch razor blade. He superglues the wound shut with gunk he finds in the back of his truck, then holds his hand over the gas burner on thestove to sear it dry. Jody, still smarting from May, does not suggest a trip to the ER.
October. The senior Paynes are invited to their first Halloween party ever. Work-related, of course. The invitation arrives with a pair of fur-lined handcuffs. Jody begins to wonder what kind of work her husband really does. He always said he was going to the office…The party is an eye-opener. Jody tries not to appear shocked. At the same time, she wishes she had a camera-phone. The guests have fancier dresses, better make-up, deeper cleavage, and those are just the men.
December. The youngest Payne is now 5, making all the children supposedly beyond the age of publicly humiliating their parents. The orthodontist has a huge salt-water aquarium of which the Paynesconsider themselves fractional owners. Apparently, over the past few months the Payne children have been naming the fish while mom reads magazines, paying no attention whatsoever. This visit they rattle off the names: the fish that hides in the coral is "Hider," the fish that chases other fish is "Chaser," and the fish that pecks like a chicken is—well, you can imagine. Jody tries to get them to change the name.They refuse and shout it louder. Jody only hopes the receptionist has her head in her hands, shoulders shaking, because she lost a contact.
It has been a wonderful year filled with good times and good friends. Good friends are especially important when you drive an old car that breaks down a lot. We consider you one of our closest friends. May the season bring you love and laughter. Merry Christmas.
Things I Learned in Traffic School
Busted.
Not for the first time either. Usually I get nailed for speeding, but this time I forked up $187 and eight precious hours of my life for a "California Roll." That’s vehicle code for the maneuver where my full and complete stop was slightly lacking in the full and complete department.
I just want to say, in my defense, that it was a right turn in a residential neighborhood—with no traffic. Well, there was one motorcycle cop, but I didn’t see him hiding in the bushes. I would have cried if I thought it might have helped. But MotoCop was a tough nut, and it wasn’t worth scaring the children.
So here I am stuck in Traffic School from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on a beautiful Saturday. My husband is complaining because he has to baby sit all day. I sweetly remind him it is not called babysitting when the children belong to you. It is called parenting.
Besides, how hard can it be to take the little Paynes to the beach? Would he rather be incarcerated at South Court instead?
I grab a seat in the last row of the courtroom along with everyone else intending to break traffic school rules with impunity. We slink down in our seats. Our instructor "J.T." works the room, encouraging us to bond with declarations of name, occupation and infraction.
When we get to the end of my row, Tim admits he owns the Salt Creek Grill. I perk up at the thought of free appetizers for all 82 of us delivered at break. Unfortunately he doesn’t pony up the pupus. Not even a stack of 20 percent off coupons for his brand new best friends.
I’m a little irritated. After all, if I owned a restaurant, I’d share.
It got worse after lunch. Way worse. Did I already tell you the rules of traffic school? To help you remember, they all start with the word "NO." No food, drinks, gum, reading material, cell phones, sleeping or anything else that could be construed as fun.
At least they allow unlimited bathroom breaks. I take full advantage of this lapse and escape at least once an hour. I think my seatmates are getting annoyed because one lady left the strap of her handbag hanging out. So of course my foot gets caught and I go sprawling across the row. Anything to liven up Traffic School.
We settle down to watch police chase videos when Tim starts flashing candy he has sneaked in past the deputies. For me, it is like seeing a file in a cake. I want it. Bad. There is contraband chocolate and Starbursts, lots of Starbursts. This time I really am going to cry. Once again, Tim does not offer to share. Thanks, buddy, for nothing.
My mind wanders. Maybe I could get a job writing for the "World’s Scariest Police Chases." That’s the name of the video we are watching. I’d have to try really hard to come up with a more torturous line than "this juggernaut from hell is about to leave the road for the last time."
I don’t mean to imply there aren’t valuable lessons to be learned from traffic school. I’m learning plenty. Here’s a math problem: If each traffic school classroom generates approximately $20,000 dollars in income per day and there are about 24 classrooms running each Saturday, how likely are you to get off with a warning the next time you get pulled over for a traffic violation?
Some other things I’ve learned today: People who can’t tell a red light from a green may be drunk — or they may be sober and think blue socks go with brown pants. Only water or the feathers from a live bird may be tossed out your window. It is cheaper to speed in Garden Grove than in Rancho Santa Margarita. Less infrastructure to finance. Household hint — Rain-X beads water off windshields AND shower enclosures. Starbursts come individually wrapped so they can be shared.
It’s time for our last sign-in sheet. JT asks us if we learned anything. We nod like a bunch of bobble heads, so eager are we to get away. He smiles calmly as we bail out, "See you back here in eighteen months." Next time I’ll try the tears.
Not for the first time either. Usually I get nailed for speeding, but this time I forked up $187 and eight precious hours of my life for a "California Roll." That’s vehicle code for the maneuver where my full and complete stop was slightly lacking in the full and complete department.
I just want to say, in my defense, that it was a right turn in a residential neighborhood—with no traffic. Well, there was one motorcycle cop, but I didn’t see him hiding in the bushes. I would have cried if I thought it might have helped. But MotoCop was a tough nut, and it wasn’t worth scaring the children.
So here I am stuck in Traffic School from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on a beautiful Saturday. My husband is complaining because he has to baby sit all day. I sweetly remind him it is not called babysitting when the children belong to you. It is called parenting.
Besides, how hard can it be to take the little Paynes to the beach? Would he rather be incarcerated at South Court instead?
I grab a seat in the last row of the courtroom along with everyone else intending to break traffic school rules with impunity. We slink down in our seats. Our instructor "J.T." works the room, encouraging us to bond with declarations of name, occupation and infraction.
When we get to the end of my row, Tim admits he owns the Salt Creek Grill. I perk up at the thought of free appetizers for all 82 of us delivered at break. Unfortunately he doesn’t pony up the pupus. Not even a stack of 20 percent off coupons for his brand new best friends.
I’m a little irritated. After all, if I owned a restaurant, I’d share.
It got worse after lunch. Way worse. Did I already tell you the rules of traffic school? To help you remember, they all start with the word "NO." No food, drinks, gum, reading material, cell phones, sleeping or anything else that could be construed as fun.
At least they allow unlimited bathroom breaks. I take full advantage of this lapse and escape at least once an hour. I think my seatmates are getting annoyed because one lady left the strap of her handbag hanging out. So of course my foot gets caught and I go sprawling across the row. Anything to liven up Traffic School.
We settle down to watch police chase videos when Tim starts flashing candy he has sneaked in past the deputies. For me, it is like seeing a file in a cake. I want it. Bad. There is contraband chocolate and Starbursts, lots of Starbursts. This time I really am going to cry. Once again, Tim does not offer to share. Thanks, buddy, for nothing.
My mind wanders. Maybe I could get a job writing for the "World’s Scariest Police Chases." That’s the name of the video we are watching. I’d have to try really hard to come up with a more torturous line than "this juggernaut from hell is about to leave the road for the last time."
I don’t mean to imply there aren’t valuable lessons to be learned from traffic school. I’m learning plenty. Here’s a math problem: If each traffic school classroom generates approximately $20,000 dollars in income per day and there are about 24 classrooms running each Saturday, how likely are you to get off with a warning the next time you get pulled over for a traffic violation?
Some other things I’ve learned today: People who can’t tell a red light from a green may be drunk — or they may be sober and think blue socks go with brown pants. Only water or the feathers from a live bird may be tossed out your window. It is cheaper to speed in Garden Grove than in Rancho Santa Margarita. Less infrastructure to finance. Household hint — Rain-X beads water off windshields AND shower enclosures. Starbursts come individually wrapped so they can be shared.
It’s time for our last sign-in sheet. JT asks us if we learned anything. We nod like a bunch of bobble heads, so eager are we to get away. He smiles calmly as we bail out, "See you back here in eighteen months." Next time I’ll try the tears.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Welcome Back to School in California!
September 2007
Dear Parent or Guardian:
I would like to welcome you and your student to John Richard Henry Marco Luis Denzel Washington Toshiba Elementary School and the second grade. This year we were named a California Distinguished School In part, we earned this honor because everyone else already got it last year, but also because of your continued support of our high standards. In order to assure a quality learning environment, please discuss the following rules and requirements with your child.
The parent must excuse absences and tardies immediately. Excessive absences or tardies win result in a sharply worded letter shaming your parenting skills and addressed to your employer OR a loss of credit. I, on the other hand, expect to miss approximately 20-40 days due to in-service training, prep time, mentoring, etc. If a qualified substitute teacher cannot be located at the day worker staging area, students will be reassigned to other classrooms. Due to district mandated student/teacher ratio requirements, students may be dispersed to any classroom regardless of grade level. Please note: students are still expected to complete all work assigned.
Grades will be made available on a trimester basis. Your student's performance will be based on standards so convoluted that a translation of academic expectations will require a separate parent/teacher conference. Please give 30 days written notice of such a request. Because of the enormous teacher workload, no requests will be honored after September. Generally, expect your student to "need improvement" at the first grading period, "show improvement" at the second, and have "mastered" the curriculum by year-end.
The district dress code will be strictly enforced this year. Please help us by being aware of our requirements and reminding your student. A general rule of thumb: your son may dress like Brittany Spears, but not your daughter. Your daughter may dress like a "gangsta" but not your son. No student shall exhibit more body art, i.e. piercing, tattoos, than parental custodians combined. All students wearing court mandated magnetic tracking devices must not sit within a five-foot radius of the teacher's paper clips, tacks, and/or staples.
First Trimester Content Prepare for the Standardized Tests
Second Trimester Content Administer Standardized Tests
Third Trimester Content: Make excuses to parents and local media for downturn in
Standardized Test scores OR brag to parents and local media about rising scores and spend cash bonus allocated by state for test gains. * For a fee, your student may enroll in after-school reading, science, math, art, music, and foreign language courses. These classes meet on campus but are not district affiliated.
Please send the following supplies with your second grader during the first week of school: 1) one dozen #2 pencils
2) six pencil cap erasers
3) one gallon industrial strength lice and nit remover with comb
4) twenty-four rolls of toilet paper or twelve Charmin Ultra Double rolls
5) One box 175 ct. tissues i.n September, sixteen boxes in February (note: matching boxes to seasonal classroom decor a plus!)
6) Three washable thick black markers. Makes graffiti clean up a breeze. 7) One Toshiba Satellite 3005-S303 Notebook w/ Intel Pentium JJ1 processor 850 MHz. (New preferred). 8) One bulk package paper towels. Please fill in cell phone # where you can be reached to clean up any bodily emissions from your student. L) (__) ____" ________ .
9) One 120 ct. pack of grading stickers. Donations of good behavior rewards of candy, pencils, erasers, and gift certificates to Starbucks, any denomination over twenty dollars are appreciated. 10) One child-size bulletproof vest to be worn during school hours. Contributions towards one adult bulletproof vest will be gratefully accepted.
The loading/unloading zone in front of the school has become too congested. The administration requests that you drop your child off at Denny's. The l.5-mile walk will help compensate for the loss of PE time. If you must unload in front, please keep to the fifteen second posted time limit. Uniformed officers will be writing parking tickets ($37) to parents digging for lunch money or prolonging good-byes.
It is my intention to make this year as pleasant as possible for your student while maintaining a high level of performance. My address, home phone, e-maiI, and classroom number are unlisted. If you have any questions, please direct them to the school secretary. To cut costs, this will be my last "paper" communication with you. Please check the school web site frequently for important updates. Those of you without Internet access may conveniently log on at any public library.
Sincerely,
Your Child's Teacher
Dear Parent or Guardian:
I would like to welcome you and your student to John Richard Henry Marco Luis Denzel Washington Toshiba Elementary School and the second grade. This year we were named a California Distinguished School In part, we earned this honor because everyone else already got it last year, but also because of your continued support of our high standards. In order to assure a quality learning environment, please discuss the following rules and requirements with your child.
The parent must excuse absences and tardies immediately. Excessive absences or tardies win result in a sharply worded letter shaming your parenting skills and addressed to your employer OR a loss of credit. I, on the other hand, expect to miss approximately 20-40 days due to in-service training, prep time, mentoring, etc. If a qualified substitute teacher cannot be located at the day worker staging area, students will be reassigned to other classrooms. Due to district mandated student/teacher ratio requirements, students may be dispersed to any classroom regardless of grade level. Please note: students are still expected to complete all work assigned.
Grades will be made available on a trimester basis. Your student's performance will be based on standards so convoluted that a translation of academic expectations will require a separate parent/teacher conference. Please give 30 days written notice of such a request. Because of the enormous teacher workload, no requests will be honored after September. Generally, expect your student to "need improvement" at the first grading period, "show improvement" at the second, and have "mastered" the curriculum by year-end.
The district dress code will be strictly enforced this year. Please help us by being aware of our requirements and reminding your student. A general rule of thumb: your son may dress like Brittany Spears, but not your daughter. Your daughter may dress like a "gangsta" but not your son. No student shall exhibit more body art, i.e. piercing, tattoos, than parental custodians combined. All students wearing court mandated magnetic tracking devices must not sit within a five-foot radius of the teacher's paper clips, tacks, and/or staples.
First Trimester Content Prepare for the Standardized Tests
Second Trimester Content Administer Standardized Tests
Third Trimester Content: Make excuses to parents and local media for downturn in
Standardized Test scores OR brag to parents and local media about rising scores and spend cash bonus allocated by state for test gains. * For a fee, your student may enroll in after-school reading, science, math, art, music, and foreign language courses. These classes meet on campus but are not district affiliated.
Please send the following supplies with your second grader during the first week of school: 1) one dozen #2 pencils
2) six pencil cap erasers
3) one gallon industrial strength lice and nit remover with comb
4) twenty-four rolls of toilet paper or twelve Charmin Ultra Double rolls
5) One box 175 ct. tissues i.n September, sixteen boxes in February (note: matching boxes to seasonal classroom decor a plus!)
6) Three washable thick black markers. Makes graffiti clean up a breeze. 7) One Toshiba Satellite 3005-S303 Notebook w/ Intel Pentium JJ1 processor 850 MHz. (New preferred). 8) One bulk package paper towels. Please fill in cell phone # where you can be reached to clean up any bodily emissions from your student. L) (__) ____" ________ .
9) One 120 ct. pack of grading stickers. Donations of good behavior rewards of candy, pencils, erasers, and gift certificates to Starbucks, any denomination over twenty dollars are appreciated. 10) One child-size bulletproof vest to be worn during school hours. Contributions towards one adult bulletproof vest will be gratefully accepted.
The loading/unloading zone in front of the school has become too congested. The administration requests that you drop your child off at Denny's. The l.5-mile walk will help compensate for the loss of PE time. If you must unload in front, please keep to the fifteen second posted time limit. Uniformed officers will be writing parking tickets ($37) to parents digging for lunch money or prolonging good-byes.
It is my intention to make this year as pleasant as possible for your student while maintaining a high level of performance. My address, home phone, e-maiI, and classroom number are unlisted. If you have any questions, please direct them to the school secretary. To cut costs, this will be my last "paper" communication with you. Please check the school web site frequently for important updates. Those of you without Internet access may conveniently log on at any public library.
Sincerely,
Your Child's Teacher
Advice Grads Never Ask For
Today is Graduation Day. Woo-hoo! You are now breaking out into the big, bad world—and life is going to be good! Your parents, who are acting sad that you will be moving on, are right now on the Internet planning to trade homes for a year with some winemaker in Tuscany.
You are on your own, baby. You’ll need advice. Lots of it. Over the years, I’ve given loads of advice to teenagers. I can’t remember one single time when they listened. I guess that makes me perfectly suited to give you advice, since you won’t listen either.
Ok, here’s the advice: DO! Here’s the rest of the advice: DON’T! The trick is to know which one to apply. So let’s talk about the four biggies: money, love, career, and health.
As for money, choose “DON’T”. You may have plenty of regrets in life, but I doubt they will be about money you didn't spend.
You are going to hate me because I know how much you love your high-def and TiVo, your digital toys and your Jamba Juice, your designer bags and your PS3. But Just Say No. Or better yet, sponge off your friends who still say yes.
Why? Because even I, a person who balances her checkbook by intuition, knows that debt is not your friend. Debt will suck the fun out of your life and the life out of your fun.
Debt is like flesh-eating bacteria. It will force you to work at jobs you hate because you can’t afford to quit. It will make you lose sleep over juggling payments. It will make you wish for the good ol’ days--before point-of-sale transactions and automatic withdrawals--where you could float a check at least ‘til Friday.
Debt is like legal drugs. It starts small. Like in small change and it’s fun while the credit line is still above your head. And then it isn’t fun anymore.
So let’s look at the real cost of your little Starbucks daily caffeine kick at say, almost five bucks a pop. Because I’m doing the math in my head, let’s pretend you make $10 an hour at the tanning salon.
Coffee-$5, gas to drive one mile to Starbucks $5, trendy outfit to wear in case paparazzi are present $200. Now keep in mind what you need to gross in order to take home five dollars- $7.50. So right now you have to slave over the tanning desk, explaining bronzers for the millionth time FOR 45 SOLID MINUTES with no breaks just to finance that little java jolt.
It’s not unlike eating. Five minutes to eat the slice of cheesecake and fifty minutes to work it off. Yes, I know. Life is unfair, but back to the Starbucks analogy.
Don’t forget to minus out the hidden costs. There’s the $5 service charge you paid to get twenty bucks out of the ATM. Another $15 to dry-clean the cute outfit now splashed with a nice light-bodied terraza blend. Dig down in the pockets of those designer skinny jeans for $2 tip to the barista because he has the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen in your life.
Wait! I’m not done. $30 to Visa because you ran into high school friends and this may be the last time you get to treat them to lattes. $35 late fee to Visa because you thought your mom took care of the mail. $15 service charge to credit card company for paying by phone. 5% increase in interest rate because of late payment. 5% decrease in FICO score because of late payment.
But no worries. The minimum due is only twenty bucks. What you don’t realize is that is per month spread out over the next thirty years.
Later, when your friends ask why you still live with your mom and dad, you can tell them it was all due to an adjustable rate Venti Ice Café Mocha Non-fat No Whip you gulped down in June of ‘07.
That is the way it works. I kid you not.
As for the other three biggies, love, career, and health? I can see your eyes starting to glaze over. Love? Marry someone who is good with money and you will never fight about finances. Work? Find a way to fit in what you love, even if you don’t make a dime. Happiness is worth more than cash.
And health? You are young, gorgeous, and energetic. Find a way to bottle that and all your money worries are over.
You are on your own, baby. You’ll need advice. Lots of it. Over the years, I’ve given loads of advice to teenagers. I can’t remember one single time when they listened. I guess that makes me perfectly suited to give you advice, since you won’t listen either.
Ok, here’s the advice: DO! Here’s the rest of the advice: DON’T! The trick is to know which one to apply. So let’s talk about the four biggies: money, love, career, and health.
As for money, choose “DON’T”. You may have plenty of regrets in life, but I doubt they will be about money you didn't spend.
You are going to hate me because I know how much you love your high-def and TiVo, your digital toys and your Jamba Juice, your designer bags and your PS3. But Just Say No. Or better yet, sponge off your friends who still say yes.
Why? Because even I, a person who balances her checkbook by intuition, knows that debt is not your friend. Debt will suck the fun out of your life and the life out of your fun.
Debt is like flesh-eating bacteria. It will force you to work at jobs you hate because you can’t afford to quit. It will make you lose sleep over juggling payments. It will make you wish for the good ol’ days--before point-of-sale transactions and automatic withdrawals--where you could float a check at least ‘til Friday.
Debt is like legal drugs. It starts small. Like in small change and it’s fun while the credit line is still above your head. And then it isn’t fun anymore.
So let’s look at the real cost of your little Starbucks daily caffeine kick at say, almost five bucks a pop. Because I’m doing the math in my head, let’s pretend you make $10 an hour at the tanning salon.
Coffee-$5, gas to drive one mile to Starbucks $5, trendy outfit to wear in case paparazzi are present $200. Now keep in mind what you need to gross in order to take home five dollars- $7.50. So right now you have to slave over the tanning desk, explaining bronzers for the millionth time FOR 45 SOLID MINUTES with no breaks just to finance that little java jolt.
It’s not unlike eating. Five minutes to eat the slice of cheesecake and fifty minutes to work it off. Yes, I know. Life is unfair, but back to the Starbucks analogy.
Don’t forget to minus out the hidden costs. There’s the $5 service charge you paid to get twenty bucks out of the ATM. Another $15 to dry-clean the cute outfit now splashed with a nice light-bodied terraza blend. Dig down in the pockets of those designer skinny jeans for $2 tip to the barista because he has the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen in your life.
Wait! I’m not done. $30 to Visa because you ran into high school friends and this may be the last time you get to treat them to lattes. $35 late fee to Visa because you thought your mom took care of the mail. $15 service charge to credit card company for paying by phone. 5% increase in interest rate because of late payment. 5% decrease in FICO score because of late payment.
But no worries. The minimum due is only twenty bucks. What you don’t realize is that is per month spread out over the next thirty years.
Later, when your friends ask why you still live with your mom and dad, you can tell them it was all due to an adjustable rate Venti Ice Café Mocha Non-fat No Whip you gulped down in June of ‘07.
That is the way it works. I kid you not.
As for the other three biggies, love, career, and health? I can see your eyes starting to glaze over. Love? Marry someone who is good with money and you will never fight about finances. Work? Find a way to fit in what you love, even if you don’t make a dime. Happiness is worth more than cash.
And health? You are young, gorgeous, and energetic. Find a way to bottle that and all your money worries are over.
Meanest Mom in the World
This classified ad recently made national news: OLDS 1999 Intrigue. Totally uncool parents who obviously don't love teenage son, selling his car. Only driven for three weeks before snoopy mom who needs to get a life found booze under front seat. $3,700/offer. Call meanest mom on the planet.
It ain’t easy being mean.
I learned all my mean tricks teaching high school. After all, with forty of them and one of you, you’d better be wily. I had one colleague who was so exasperated with students asking to use the rest room during class that he used a real toilet seat as a bathroom pass. Mean, yes. Humiliating? Hopefully. Did it cut down on the problem. You bet.
I watched. I learned. I implemented. So when it comes to discipline and child raising, I try to get my “mean” on whenever I can.
All my girls wanted cell phones for Christmas, but my oldest wanted one the worst. It got so bad I couldn’t read the newspaper without her sighing over my shoulder at every Motorola ad. She could not frame a sentence without referring to the cell phone of her dreams. It was disgusting.
She tried every line of reasoning from “It’s safer!” to “I promise I won’t lose it!” Yeah, just like she didn’t lose her brand new Nintendo DS when she left it on an airplane.
Ask her where she put her digital camera. See where that gets you. Ask her where exactly is the iPod? Determine if she has any clue where her retainer is at this very minute. Ask her if the thumb drive currently in the bottom of the washing machine might belong to her. See where I’m going with this?
If any of her electronics are actually to be found, I guarantee the battery will be dead. That, of course, will not be her fault. Someone—in this very house—has stolen her charger and therefore made it impossible to juice up her goods.
And since she was so busy MAKING THE HONOR ROLL, she didn’t have time for the delicate sibling negotiations required to get back her charger so she could show she was RESPONSIBLE and needed a cell phone.
If I weren’t so mean, my heart would break.
Then she dropped the dreaded E-bomb. You know, EVERYBODY in the entire middle-school world has a cell phone except for her. All I could say was boo-hoo.
She must have known it was a lost cause because when she opened her fancy curling iron on Christmas morning, she seemed genuinely pleased. Two hours later, she came to me with a nasty red mark on her neck.
“I burned myself with the curling iron.”
Like I haven’t heard that line before? Every girl in my high school with a suspicious mark on her neck told the same story. Great! Not only have I unwittingly given my daughter a dangerous appliance, but also a darn good teenage alibi.
I should have stuck with the RAZR.
It ain’t easy being mean.
I learned all my mean tricks teaching high school. After all, with forty of them and one of you, you’d better be wily. I had one colleague who was so exasperated with students asking to use the rest room during class that he used a real toilet seat as a bathroom pass. Mean, yes. Humiliating? Hopefully. Did it cut down on the problem. You bet.
I watched. I learned. I implemented. So when it comes to discipline and child raising, I try to get my “mean” on whenever I can.
All my girls wanted cell phones for Christmas, but my oldest wanted one the worst. It got so bad I couldn’t read the newspaper without her sighing over my shoulder at every Motorola ad. She could not frame a sentence without referring to the cell phone of her dreams. It was disgusting.
She tried every line of reasoning from “It’s safer!” to “I promise I won’t lose it!” Yeah, just like she didn’t lose her brand new Nintendo DS when she left it on an airplane.
Ask her where she put her digital camera. See where that gets you. Ask her where exactly is the iPod? Determine if she has any clue where her retainer is at this very minute. Ask her if the thumb drive currently in the bottom of the washing machine might belong to her. See where I’m going with this?
If any of her electronics are actually to be found, I guarantee the battery will be dead. That, of course, will not be her fault. Someone—in this very house—has stolen her charger and therefore made it impossible to juice up her goods.
And since she was so busy MAKING THE HONOR ROLL, she didn’t have time for the delicate sibling negotiations required to get back her charger so she could show she was RESPONSIBLE and needed a cell phone.
If I weren’t so mean, my heart would break.
Then she dropped the dreaded E-bomb. You know, EVERYBODY in the entire middle-school world has a cell phone except for her. All I could say was boo-hoo.
She must have known it was a lost cause because when she opened her fancy curling iron on Christmas morning, she seemed genuinely pleased. Two hours later, she came to me with a nasty red mark on her neck.
“I burned myself with the curling iron.”
Like I haven’t heard that line before? Every girl in my high school with a suspicious mark on her neck told the same story. Great! Not only have I unwittingly given my daughter a dangerous appliance, but also a darn good teenage alibi.
I should have stuck with the RAZR.
Pack Rat Love
There is no upside to being the packer in the family. No one will thank you for remembering his toothbrush or her bathing suit. But God forbid you forget something--like your husband’s entire suitcase—and you will never hear the end of it.
So remember the real stress of that stress-free summer holiday you have planned is not the long airport security lines, or a passport that still hasn’t arrived, or even being the 26th car in line behind a RV going 35 mph on a two-lane road out of Victorville.
It’s packing. There are just so many ways the job can go south.
I am always searching travel magazines for helpful hints from experienced packers. A lot of the tips are pretty lame. Why on earth would I want to take only one pair of underwear and wash it out in the bathroom sink every night?
How much space could my underwear possibly take up?
Let me rephrase that.
Underwear space in the suitcase is prime real estate. I like to think of extra underwear as insurance. Ever since I got stuck in Death Valley because both roads washed out in a massive downpour, I carry spares.
So I’ve decided to come up with my own packing tip. I only have one but it is really good and I’ve never seen it before, not even in Heloise’s Hints. Here goes: Travel only to hot/cold (circle one) places.
Think about packing for Hawaii. Bathing suit. Shorts. Flip-flops. Done. If you like, you can buy one of those cotton sarongs at the ABC Store for $4.99. Then you’ve added a skirt, a top, a turban, a beach blanket, tablecloth, knapsack, stroller shade, and a costume for Halloween.
Simple.
That’s because Hawaii is hot. Everywhere. All the time. Even in a hurricane, Hawaii is hot. Earthquake? Still hot. Volcanic eruption? Even hotter. Makes for easy packing.
Have you ever planned a ski vacation? Let me guess. You pull out the duffel bag filled with gloves, goggles, long johns and wool socks and you are ready. Sure it’s bulkier than your Maui carry-on, but it’s not rocket science.
The trouble comes with those volatile weather destinations. For simplicity in packing, avoid at all costs places with temperature changes of more than ten degrees. That’s why a summer trip to the mountains is always a bad idea. You might as well strap your whole closet onto your back. You’ll need everything in it, most likely within the space of fifteen minutes.
We should have followed our own advice on our recent trip to the mountains. The first clue was that little digital temp gauge on the rear view mirror clicking over faster than the super-unleaded pump at the gas station.
Within minutes, we went from triple digits so hot the “Check Tires” light flashed ominously to complaints of frostbite from the back seat between episodes of “I Love Lucy.”
Instead of heeding the signs and turning around, we tried our best to compensate. After all, we were on vacation! And it was going to be fun!
We couldn’t wait to get out on the trail in that fresh alpine air.
Our favorite mountain activity is hiking. For me, it is the downhill part. Although we all carry packs on our backs, we are not backpackers. We are day hikers who are vainly trying to cover every meteorological base. There are extra outfits for swimming, sunbathing, snow, wind, heat, mosquitoes, and falls in mud or streams.
I suspect my children’s daypacks weigh more than they do. I worry that if they fall over backwards like beetles, they may never get up. But that’s the cost of being prepared.
Still, you never know what you forgot until you need it desperately. In our case, it was toilet paper. Stupidly, we hadn’t conserved. During lunch, someone spilled a Capri Sun on the picnic tarp and we mopped it up with our most precious commodity.
Ten minutes up the trail, child #2 gets a nosebleed. Of course she is wearing a white shirt. Of course there is enough bright red blood everywhere to bring in CSI: Eastern Sierras. Of course this freaks her out which results in more flinging of blood. At this point, we all are flecked with red.
Some toilet paper would come in handy.
Thankfully, we had some. It was just stuffed in a ziploc, soaked in Wild Cherry and squished against the remnants of a tuna fish sandwich.
If only I had a sarong…
So remember the real stress of that stress-free summer holiday you have planned is not the long airport security lines, or a passport that still hasn’t arrived, or even being the 26th car in line behind a RV going 35 mph on a two-lane road out of Victorville.
It’s packing. There are just so many ways the job can go south.
I am always searching travel magazines for helpful hints from experienced packers. A lot of the tips are pretty lame. Why on earth would I want to take only one pair of underwear and wash it out in the bathroom sink every night?
How much space could my underwear possibly take up?
Let me rephrase that.
Underwear space in the suitcase is prime real estate. I like to think of extra underwear as insurance. Ever since I got stuck in Death Valley because both roads washed out in a massive downpour, I carry spares.
So I’ve decided to come up with my own packing tip. I only have one but it is really good and I’ve never seen it before, not even in Heloise’s Hints. Here goes: Travel only to hot/cold (circle one) places.
Think about packing for Hawaii. Bathing suit. Shorts. Flip-flops. Done. If you like, you can buy one of those cotton sarongs at the ABC Store for $4.99. Then you’ve added a skirt, a top, a turban, a beach blanket, tablecloth, knapsack, stroller shade, and a costume for Halloween.
Simple.
That’s because Hawaii is hot. Everywhere. All the time. Even in a hurricane, Hawaii is hot. Earthquake? Still hot. Volcanic eruption? Even hotter. Makes for easy packing.
Have you ever planned a ski vacation? Let me guess. You pull out the duffel bag filled with gloves, goggles, long johns and wool socks and you are ready. Sure it’s bulkier than your Maui carry-on, but it’s not rocket science.
The trouble comes with those volatile weather destinations. For simplicity in packing, avoid at all costs places with temperature changes of more than ten degrees. That’s why a summer trip to the mountains is always a bad idea. You might as well strap your whole closet onto your back. You’ll need everything in it, most likely within the space of fifteen minutes.
We should have followed our own advice on our recent trip to the mountains. The first clue was that little digital temp gauge on the rear view mirror clicking over faster than the super-unleaded pump at the gas station.
Within minutes, we went from triple digits so hot the “Check Tires” light flashed ominously to complaints of frostbite from the back seat between episodes of “I Love Lucy.”
Instead of heeding the signs and turning around, we tried our best to compensate. After all, we were on vacation! And it was going to be fun!
We couldn’t wait to get out on the trail in that fresh alpine air.
Our favorite mountain activity is hiking. For me, it is the downhill part. Although we all carry packs on our backs, we are not backpackers. We are day hikers who are vainly trying to cover every meteorological base. There are extra outfits for swimming, sunbathing, snow, wind, heat, mosquitoes, and falls in mud or streams.
I suspect my children’s daypacks weigh more than they do. I worry that if they fall over backwards like beetles, they may never get up. But that’s the cost of being prepared.
Still, you never know what you forgot until you need it desperately. In our case, it was toilet paper. Stupidly, we hadn’t conserved. During lunch, someone spilled a Capri Sun on the picnic tarp and we mopped it up with our most precious commodity.
Ten minutes up the trail, child #2 gets a nosebleed. Of course she is wearing a white shirt. Of course there is enough bright red blood everywhere to bring in CSI: Eastern Sierras. Of course this freaks her out which results in more flinging of blood. At this point, we all are flecked with red.
Some toilet paper would come in handy.
Thankfully, we had some. It was just stuffed in a ziploc, soaked in Wild Cherry and squished against the remnants of a tuna fish sandwich.
If only I had a sarong…
You Know Who You Are
There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who “Forward” and those who don’t. We’re talking email, of course, and the battle lines are drawn.
It’s not unlike the Civil War. Brother against brother. Friend against friend.
It is high-risk for forwarders. One too many jokes about politics and it’s a w.w.w. duel to the cyber-death. Soon you’re nothing more than a sender blocked forever.
My parents are prolific forwarders. That’s redundant, of course. All forwarders are prolific. It’s their nature. One day scientists will discover a gene that explains forwarding. Not surprisingly, it will be found next to the “Reply All” gene.
Before the Technological Age, I actually received letters from my parents. Occasionally, those letters would be taped to a tin of homemade cookies. The letters would be chatty. Sometimes they’d enclose a clipped-out cartoon with my dad’s two word comments in the margin. “You! Ha!”
That’s all dried up since the advent of email. I really miss the cookies.
Times have changed and so have mom and dad. Now I get forwards on every subject imaginable: animated jokes involving saggy body parts, amazing places that look amazingly photoshopped, remedies to cure everything they think is wrong with me, tearjerker PowerPoints that induce gagging, videos of puppies and kittens and car crashes. You know, just the usual.
All from my parents.
So if you were wondering what the retired people of America are doing right this very minute, wonder no more. They are scouring YouTube for cute clips to send you.
I have to pay attention because I will be quizzed. Ten minutes after the little ping of Outlook Express, the phone will ring. “Did you see that email I sent you?”
Before I can even stammer that I’m not always glued to my computer checking stock prices and playing Spider Solitaire, which happens to be exactly what I’m doing when they call, I get the lecture.
“You didn’t read it, did you? That was important information. I’m never going to send you anything again.”
Go ahead; try to lie to your mom that you never received it. It won’t work for two reasons. Number one: it’s extremely difficult to fib to a woman sitting in her rocking chair, because you know that little gray-haired woman is packing heat.
Ok, it’s the heat coming off the laptop she’s cradling like a grandchild, but with about two gigabytes of RAM—that’s a lot of firepower to make your life miserable. Number two: the woman no longer works for a living. That means she’s got nothing but time to research where exactly that little email ended up.
Then I’ll hear about how my father figured out how to tell when the recipient opens the email. Geez. I haven’t been a teenager for decades and they are still spying on me!
So it’s better to just admit I hit delete as soon as I see the subject line: “Vitamin B Cures Irritability!” Five minutes later, there’s a forward about ungrateful baby boomer children in my inbox.
My parents have never shown favorites. My sisters’ mailboxes get flooded as well. Often all three of us are designated “Undisclosed Recipient.” That’s always a warning flag for something I don’t want to read.
One sister won’t tell them her office email. Like that will work. My dad is better than the CIA at digging up our personal information from the web. She thinks she’s safe. But one day she’ll log on and there will be a rhyming poem about Wonderful Women Who Love Chocolate and instructions to pass it on to ten wonderful women…
She might as well give her two weeks notice.
My other sister is braver than we are. She flat-out told mom and dad to stop sending her forwards. Hey, if she was willing to start a family war, then I was willing to duck in the crossfire. But I must say it’s a lot easier to be brave when you live in San Diego and don’t need The Forwarders to pick up the kids for you occasionally.
Then my dad asked me to forward a message to my sister. Something about plastic in the microwave, I figure. I now must choose. Father or sister. North or South. What do I do?
I know. I’ll send it to a stranger. It will circumnavigate the globe in 22 minutes and be in my sister’s mailbox 642 forwards later. She will never know it was from me.
You owe me, Dad.
It’s not unlike the Civil War. Brother against brother. Friend against friend.
It is high-risk for forwarders. One too many jokes about politics and it’s a w.w.w. duel to the cyber-death. Soon you’re nothing more than a sender blocked forever.
My parents are prolific forwarders. That’s redundant, of course. All forwarders are prolific. It’s their nature. One day scientists will discover a gene that explains forwarding. Not surprisingly, it will be found next to the “Reply All” gene.
Before the Technological Age, I actually received letters from my parents. Occasionally, those letters would be taped to a tin of homemade cookies. The letters would be chatty. Sometimes they’d enclose a clipped-out cartoon with my dad’s two word comments in the margin. “You! Ha!”
That’s all dried up since the advent of email. I really miss the cookies.
Times have changed and so have mom and dad. Now I get forwards on every subject imaginable: animated jokes involving saggy body parts, amazing places that look amazingly photoshopped, remedies to cure everything they think is wrong with me, tearjerker PowerPoints that induce gagging, videos of puppies and kittens and car crashes. You know, just the usual.
All from my parents.
So if you were wondering what the retired people of America are doing right this very minute, wonder no more. They are scouring YouTube for cute clips to send you.
I have to pay attention because I will be quizzed. Ten minutes after the little ping of Outlook Express, the phone will ring. “Did you see that email I sent you?”
Before I can even stammer that I’m not always glued to my computer checking stock prices and playing Spider Solitaire, which happens to be exactly what I’m doing when they call, I get the lecture.
“You didn’t read it, did you? That was important information. I’m never going to send you anything again.”
Go ahead; try to lie to your mom that you never received it. It won’t work for two reasons. Number one: it’s extremely difficult to fib to a woman sitting in her rocking chair, because you know that little gray-haired woman is packing heat.
Ok, it’s the heat coming off the laptop she’s cradling like a grandchild, but with about two gigabytes of RAM—that’s a lot of firepower to make your life miserable. Number two: the woman no longer works for a living. That means she’s got nothing but time to research where exactly that little email ended up.
Then I’ll hear about how my father figured out how to tell when the recipient opens the email. Geez. I haven’t been a teenager for decades and they are still spying on me!
So it’s better to just admit I hit delete as soon as I see the subject line: “Vitamin B Cures Irritability!” Five minutes later, there’s a forward about ungrateful baby boomer children in my inbox.
My parents have never shown favorites. My sisters’ mailboxes get flooded as well. Often all three of us are designated “Undisclosed Recipient.” That’s always a warning flag for something I don’t want to read.
One sister won’t tell them her office email. Like that will work. My dad is better than the CIA at digging up our personal information from the web. She thinks she’s safe. But one day she’ll log on and there will be a rhyming poem about Wonderful Women Who Love Chocolate and instructions to pass it on to ten wonderful women…
She might as well give her two weeks notice.
My other sister is braver than we are. She flat-out told mom and dad to stop sending her forwards. Hey, if she was willing to start a family war, then I was willing to duck in the crossfire. But I must say it’s a lot easier to be brave when you live in San Diego and don’t need The Forwarders to pick up the kids for you occasionally.
Then my dad asked me to forward a message to my sister. Something about plastic in the microwave, I figure. I now must choose. Father or sister. North or South. What do I do?
I know. I’ll send it to a stranger. It will circumnavigate the globe in 22 minutes and be in my sister’s mailbox 642 forwards later. She will never know it was from me.
You owe me, Dad.
One More Reason to Get Pregnant
There are benefits to having kids. For example, you can buy any toy that catches your fancy and act like it is for your child.
For example, there’s a mom at school who rides her kid’s caster board before the bell rings. I understand the woman’s attraction to forbidden fruit. We are supposed to be adult. Sensible. But sometimes the toys look so fun.
That’s how I unexpectedly fell in love with an ant farm. I had it bad. I couldn’t stop thinking about possessing it, owning it, making it mine.
We were holiday shopping in one of those high-tech gadget stores where everything is embedded with a computer chip and lights up via LED. Usually that kind of store leaves me cold. What do I care if my pillow can tell the temperature in Tokyo?
But then I saw the ant farm. The container was curve of thick acrylic. The “dirt” was a blue gel that looked like something you’d pick up at Planet Beauty. The ants were just ants. I guess they haven’t figured out how to high-tech those guys.
They were tunneling like crazy through the hair gel. Corridors wove around like the 5/405 Interchange if you threw in the 57 and the 91 on top. The little insect commuters were a work of futile performance art and I was entranced.
I bought one for my daughter. We had the option of collecting our own ants or buying them online. Since my pest service guy is like family now, I didn’t hold any hopes of finding any in the pantry or marching along the baseboards. And I would have been ticked if I had.
So we went online and paid extra to make sure our ants would arrive speedy quick and alive. I did not ask the pest control guy for his opinion. Two days later an envelope lay on my doormat dramatically marked “Live” and “Biohazard.” No telling what the UPS driver thought.
There was only one warning: Do not release into environment. Ha! What do they think this is? Jurassic Park? Our plan was to open the test tube, gently reach in with our plastic stick and allow them to climb out one by one—or even two by two if they preferred--into their new home.
They ignored the instructions, swarming out all at once. We screamed. I dumped the ants into the gel, but they were climbing those acrylic walls faster than I could fumble with the lid. We screamed some more. Louder this time.
Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to buy the biggest ants with the biggest mandibles because now several were making a break for it and we were still jumping around screaming. We corralled the escapees with dixie cups but how to get them back in their space-age home?
It wasn’t easy. There were casualties. But soon everyone was digging merrily, comrades forgotten. It was a rocky start but we’re good now. Love is like that.
For example, there’s a mom at school who rides her kid’s caster board before the bell rings. I understand the woman’s attraction to forbidden fruit. We are supposed to be adult. Sensible. But sometimes the toys look so fun.
That’s how I unexpectedly fell in love with an ant farm. I had it bad. I couldn’t stop thinking about possessing it, owning it, making it mine.
We were holiday shopping in one of those high-tech gadget stores where everything is embedded with a computer chip and lights up via LED. Usually that kind of store leaves me cold. What do I care if my pillow can tell the temperature in Tokyo?
But then I saw the ant farm. The container was curve of thick acrylic. The “dirt” was a blue gel that looked like something you’d pick up at Planet Beauty. The ants were just ants. I guess they haven’t figured out how to high-tech those guys.
They were tunneling like crazy through the hair gel. Corridors wove around like the 5/405 Interchange if you threw in the 57 and the 91 on top. The little insect commuters were a work of futile performance art and I was entranced.
I bought one for my daughter. We had the option of collecting our own ants or buying them online. Since my pest service guy is like family now, I didn’t hold any hopes of finding any in the pantry or marching along the baseboards. And I would have been ticked if I had.
So we went online and paid extra to make sure our ants would arrive speedy quick and alive. I did not ask the pest control guy for his opinion. Two days later an envelope lay on my doormat dramatically marked “Live” and “Biohazard.” No telling what the UPS driver thought.
There was only one warning: Do not release into environment. Ha! What do they think this is? Jurassic Park? Our plan was to open the test tube, gently reach in with our plastic stick and allow them to climb out one by one—or even two by two if they preferred--into their new home.
They ignored the instructions, swarming out all at once. We screamed. I dumped the ants into the gel, but they were climbing those acrylic walls faster than I could fumble with the lid. We screamed some more. Louder this time.
Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to buy the biggest ants with the biggest mandibles because now several were making a break for it and we were still jumping around screaming. We corralled the escapees with dixie cups but how to get them back in their space-age home?
It wasn’t easy. There were casualties. But soon everyone was digging merrily, comrades forgotten. It was a rocky start but we’re good now. Love is like that.
Flying the Friendly Skies
There’s something about hot, sweaty, muggy weather that puts me in the mood for love. That’s because I got married on the hottest, most humid day ever experienced in Orange County.
My wedding day in July 1988 broke triple digits. Massive thunderclouds crowded over Saddleback Mountain saddling the area like a fat, warm wet towel. Because it was the 80s, I was wearing about fifty pounds of white satin and beads, sequins and lace. And that was just the mutton chop sleeves.
We got married to the strains of a swamp cooler. Thanks to three cans of Aqua Net and a Mork & Mindy perm, my big hair stayed big. My Cosmo cover make-up got shiny but thankfully didn’t slide down to my cleavage. I was trussed up like a rib roast in order to zip up. I couldn’t breathe, but the upside was how that boning took every speck of back fat and tummy roll and shifted it topside for amazing results.
Everything was shaping up for happily ever after. I had only one personal thundercloud marring the horizon: our honeymoon.
It’s not what you think. It wasn’t the wedding night, or the European vacation, or even the mound of thank you notes and Visa bills awaiting our return. It was the flights.
I was afraid of flying. Looking back, I’m sure I drove him crazy, clutching his hand every time the plane dipped a wing. I’m lucky he didn’t divorce me immediately upon landing at Heathrow.
He would just roll his eyes at me. Fast forward nineteen years and he is still rolling his eyes.
We decided to fly to San Francisco for an anniversary getaway weekend. I still don’t like air travel. Although I have less fear about the plane falling out of the sky, I have more fear about it being shot out. What that means is in almost two decades of marriage, nothing has changed.
My husband flies about as often as I go to Costco. He’s down with the rules & regs, the tricks and shortcuts. But he also likes to mess with me, so I never know if he is joking or not.
We were in the car on the way to the airport when he started in about my underwear. “You aren’t wearing one of those bras with metal in it, are you?”
I immediately got defensive. “I’m not taking it off.”
He stepped up the guilt. “I guess you don’t mind getting pulled into secondary inspection where they strip-search you.”
He didn’t realize he was talking to a woman who had been through childbirth three times and had no dignity or shame left. “Oh, goody.”
I knew he was just getting warmed up. He asked me if I had checked-in online like I was supposed to. I pulled out the printouts, all proud of myself. I had nice little packets for everything: dinner reservations, hotel directions, show tickets.
All he saw was the big letter “B.” I didn’t realize in Southwest Airlines lingo “B” stands for Better Bust your Bum to get a Decent Seat. The only thing worse is “C.” They should change it to “S” which stands for Screwed or Squished which is what you will be in that middle seat.
He got an evil glint in his eye. “This may mean we won’t be able to sit together.”
That was a low blow. He knows how I need to clutch his hand during take-offs and landings, and bumpy bits, and through clouds, and when bells rings, and when the engine noises change. Ok, all the time.
He must have seen the sheer panic in my eyes because he relented. “Don’t worry. I’ll try to get us on an earlier flight.”
An earlier flight? I didn’t like that idea at all. Isn’t that like playing Russian roulette with destiny? You always hear stories of people changing planes only to be trapped on the Flight of Doom. If only they’d kept their reservation, they’d still be with us today…
I calmly explained these ramifications. He shook his head in disgust. It turns out that flying, according to the expert (my husband) is like war. It is all strategy. If you aren’t constantly advancing your position, crushing the less experienced along the way, you will never get to your destination.
And don’t even get him started about Chicago O’Hare.
We caught the earlier flight and even got to sit together. I worried aloud about the light fog.
My husband squeezed my hand. “Don’t worry. It’s only a hazard in the summer.”
My wedding day in July 1988 broke triple digits. Massive thunderclouds crowded over Saddleback Mountain saddling the area like a fat, warm wet towel. Because it was the 80s, I was wearing about fifty pounds of white satin and beads, sequins and lace. And that was just the mutton chop sleeves.
We got married to the strains of a swamp cooler. Thanks to three cans of Aqua Net and a Mork & Mindy perm, my big hair stayed big. My Cosmo cover make-up got shiny but thankfully didn’t slide down to my cleavage. I was trussed up like a rib roast in order to zip up. I couldn’t breathe, but the upside was how that boning took every speck of back fat and tummy roll and shifted it topside for amazing results.
Everything was shaping up for happily ever after. I had only one personal thundercloud marring the horizon: our honeymoon.
It’s not what you think. It wasn’t the wedding night, or the European vacation, or even the mound of thank you notes and Visa bills awaiting our return. It was the flights.
I was afraid of flying. Looking back, I’m sure I drove him crazy, clutching his hand every time the plane dipped a wing. I’m lucky he didn’t divorce me immediately upon landing at Heathrow.
He would just roll his eyes at me. Fast forward nineteen years and he is still rolling his eyes.
We decided to fly to San Francisco for an anniversary getaway weekend. I still don’t like air travel. Although I have less fear about the plane falling out of the sky, I have more fear about it being shot out. What that means is in almost two decades of marriage, nothing has changed.
My husband flies about as often as I go to Costco. He’s down with the rules & regs, the tricks and shortcuts. But he also likes to mess with me, so I never know if he is joking or not.
We were in the car on the way to the airport when he started in about my underwear. “You aren’t wearing one of those bras with metal in it, are you?”
I immediately got defensive. “I’m not taking it off.”
He stepped up the guilt. “I guess you don’t mind getting pulled into secondary inspection where they strip-search you.”
He didn’t realize he was talking to a woman who had been through childbirth three times and had no dignity or shame left. “Oh, goody.”
I knew he was just getting warmed up. He asked me if I had checked-in online like I was supposed to. I pulled out the printouts, all proud of myself. I had nice little packets for everything: dinner reservations, hotel directions, show tickets.
All he saw was the big letter “B.” I didn’t realize in Southwest Airlines lingo “B” stands for Better Bust your Bum to get a Decent Seat. The only thing worse is “C.” They should change it to “S” which stands for Screwed or Squished which is what you will be in that middle seat.
He got an evil glint in his eye. “This may mean we won’t be able to sit together.”
That was a low blow. He knows how I need to clutch his hand during take-offs and landings, and bumpy bits, and through clouds, and when bells rings, and when the engine noises change. Ok, all the time.
He must have seen the sheer panic in my eyes because he relented. “Don’t worry. I’ll try to get us on an earlier flight.”
An earlier flight? I didn’t like that idea at all. Isn’t that like playing Russian roulette with destiny? You always hear stories of people changing planes only to be trapped on the Flight of Doom. If only they’d kept their reservation, they’d still be with us today…
I calmly explained these ramifications. He shook his head in disgust. It turns out that flying, according to the expert (my husband) is like war. It is all strategy. If you aren’t constantly advancing your position, crushing the less experienced along the way, you will never get to your destination.
And don’t even get him started about Chicago O’Hare.
We caught the earlier flight and even got to sit together. I worried aloud about the light fog.
My husband squeezed my hand. “Don’t worry. It’s only a hazard in the summer.”
Breaking Up...With Spring Break
Spring Break used to coincide with Easter. Not anymore. I’m not sure if Spring Break even coincides with spring anymore.
Vacation spots during Spring Break can be tough to call. Nothing is worse than spring skiing with no snow and too many sweaters.
But this Spring Break, things would be different. We’d plan better. The ideal destination would be not too hot, not too cold, not too far, not too close, not too pricey, and not too cheap (no tent camping—I put that one in). And it better be blisteringly memorable.
We settled on a couple of foreign countries. This way the kids would be exposed to different cultures, rich heritage, and majestic scenery. Unlike home, it would be good for them to see places that are not fodder for shallow and salacious reality shows.
The name of the first country we visited was called “Utah.” The second was named “Las Vegas.” Luckily in both cases, we were able to easily communicate with the locals.
In Utah, that was because they spoke English. Every single one of them. Frankly, it was a shock. I wasn’t used to having to translate English. It took a lot of extra concentration. It’s funny though, by the end of the trip I was actually dreaming in English! I guess immersion really does work.
Las Vegas was the polar opposite. It was a prime rib buffet of languages comprised primarily of cuss words. Conveniently posted on cabs, busses, and billboards were lots of helpful pictures of very friendly female natives garbed in what I can only assume were ancestral sequins while displaying full-body sign language to guide hapless tourists like us.
Some of you are saying, “Did this chick sleep through geography? We all know Las Vegas is not another country; it’s another planet.”
I won’t argue the point.
But Utah is different. For example, the Coral Pink Sand Dunes were the unbelievable orange of a bad Mystic tan. I yelled to my family, “Quick! Come look at this!”
They ran over, maybe expecting a slithering sand dune snake. “What? What?”
I grinned at my rare discovery. “Check out the bathrooms.”
My girls peeked inside, and their mouths dropped open. It was so spotless we could picnic off the floor and save getting sand in our sandwiches. That’s when I knew we weren’t in America anymore.
See, here in America, we take pride in our squalid public facilities. Graffiti is art of the repressed, toilet paper everywhere but on the roll flaunts our wealth, while lack of soap and paper towels means only that we are too busy to wash our hands anyway. And perfecting the art of “hovering” makes all those stair-master moments worthwhile.
In Utah, every single bathroom was like that first one. It didn’t matter if it was a pit toilet in the middle of nowhere or a trucker rest stop. Each was a porcelain dream.
Another reason we knew it was a foreign country was because we drove through a town where some of the folks allegedly practice polygamy. Although I didn’t see any “Big Love,” I realized we’d just swapped the reality shows of home for HBO.
I worried my husband might get some harem ideas, but he only said the town looked boring and he wouldn’t want to live there. That was probably because we hadn’t got to Vegas yet. Multiple girlfriends are probably a lot less boring than multiple wives.
Vegas felt like Europe in that it was wildly expensive and people smoked a lot. We were tired of foreign food so we had dinner at California Pizza Kitchen/Sports Betting in the Mirage.
I tried to explain to the kids the finer points of pari-mutuel wagering but I don’t really understand the finer points. I even had trouble defining the term “odds.” Thankfully, there was no Keno at the table or I wouldn’t have been able to explain that either.
On the way home we were stopped and grilled at the checkpoint station. We fessed up to three overripe Utah bananas, which they could have since the fruit was smelling up the minivan.
They said they didn’t want our stinkin’ bananas. They did want us to pop the hatch so they could check for contraband soil or seeds. Uh-oh. Did a gallon ziploc of orange sand count? Were we going to be thrown in a foreign clinker?
Before we could call the American Embassy, they realized we had California plates and waved us through. Whew! That was a close one.
It felt good to be back in America.
Vacation spots during Spring Break can be tough to call. Nothing is worse than spring skiing with no snow and too many sweaters.
But this Spring Break, things would be different. We’d plan better. The ideal destination would be not too hot, not too cold, not too far, not too close, not too pricey, and not too cheap (no tent camping—I put that one in). And it better be blisteringly memorable.
We settled on a couple of foreign countries. This way the kids would be exposed to different cultures, rich heritage, and majestic scenery. Unlike home, it would be good for them to see places that are not fodder for shallow and salacious reality shows.
The name of the first country we visited was called “Utah.” The second was named “Las Vegas.” Luckily in both cases, we were able to easily communicate with the locals.
In Utah, that was because they spoke English. Every single one of them. Frankly, it was a shock. I wasn’t used to having to translate English. It took a lot of extra concentration. It’s funny though, by the end of the trip I was actually dreaming in English! I guess immersion really does work.
Las Vegas was the polar opposite. It was a prime rib buffet of languages comprised primarily of cuss words. Conveniently posted on cabs, busses, and billboards were lots of helpful pictures of very friendly female natives garbed in what I can only assume were ancestral sequins while displaying full-body sign language to guide hapless tourists like us.
Some of you are saying, “Did this chick sleep through geography? We all know Las Vegas is not another country; it’s another planet.”
I won’t argue the point.
But Utah is different. For example, the Coral Pink Sand Dunes were the unbelievable orange of a bad Mystic tan. I yelled to my family, “Quick! Come look at this!”
They ran over, maybe expecting a slithering sand dune snake. “What? What?”
I grinned at my rare discovery. “Check out the bathrooms.”
My girls peeked inside, and their mouths dropped open. It was so spotless we could picnic off the floor and save getting sand in our sandwiches. That’s when I knew we weren’t in America anymore.
See, here in America, we take pride in our squalid public facilities. Graffiti is art of the repressed, toilet paper everywhere but on the roll flaunts our wealth, while lack of soap and paper towels means only that we are too busy to wash our hands anyway. And perfecting the art of “hovering” makes all those stair-master moments worthwhile.
In Utah, every single bathroom was like that first one. It didn’t matter if it was a pit toilet in the middle of nowhere or a trucker rest stop. Each was a porcelain dream.
Another reason we knew it was a foreign country was because we drove through a town where some of the folks allegedly practice polygamy. Although I didn’t see any “Big Love,” I realized we’d just swapped the reality shows of home for HBO.
I worried my husband might get some harem ideas, but he only said the town looked boring and he wouldn’t want to live there. That was probably because we hadn’t got to Vegas yet. Multiple girlfriends are probably a lot less boring than multiple wives.
Vegas felt like Europe in that it was wildly expensive and people smoked a lot. We were tired of foreign food so we had dinner at California Pizza Kitchen/Sports Betting in the Mirage.
I tried to explain to the kids the finer points of pari-mutuel wagering but I don’t really understand the finer points. I even had trouble defining the term “odds.” Thankfully, there was no Keno at the table or I wouldn’t have been able to explain that either.
On the way home we were stopped and grilled at the checkpoint station. We fessed up to three overripe Utah bananas, which they could have since the fruit was smelling up the minivan.
They said they didn’t want our stinkin’ bananas. They did want us to pop the hatch so they could check for contraband soil or seeds. Uh-oh. Did a gallon ziploc of orange sand count? Were we going to be thrown in a foreign clinker?
Before we could call the American Embassy, they realized we had California plates and waved us through. Whew! That was a close one.
It felt good to be back in America.
Saving Second Base
It used to be orange was the signature color of October. There was some nice symmetry going since both words started with vowels shaped like pumpkins. Simple. Elegant. Easy to remember.
Then pink came along and ruined everything.
Hey, I’m all for helping “Find a Cure for Breast Cancer” and “Save 2nd Base” but couldn’t they have picked a nice spring month for their pink blitz? We “autumns” have been waiting all year to finally match our outfits to our skin tones. So if I donate twenty bucks, can I wear hunter green or a nice deep russet guilt-free?
My middle child came home last week and declared she would never wear pink again. That seemed a little militant for someone who owned quite a few lead-coated pink plastic toys from China—and wasn’t willing to give them up. She did promise not to lick them.
But what about her favorite camouflage pink skirt? She’d forgotten about that. This is the kid who thinks camouflage is the new black. It goes with every outfit, every occasion. Would she stick to her guns and give up her flirty camo skirt?
I wondered where she got this sudden aversion to pink. Did she witness some poor, hapless student barf up Pepto Bismo at school? I could see how that would be enough to prune pink from the your wardrobe.
So what’s the deal with pink, I asked.
She looked around to see if her sisters were eavesdropping and dropped her voice to a whisper, “I know what it stands for.” She giggled and pointed to her washboard chest.
I spilled the beans on pink--explaining how it stands for curing breast cancer, not the actual breasts themselves. She wanted to know how they cure it. I told her everything I knew which pretty much boiled down to one word: mammograms.
I told her how important they were…blah, blah, blah…how every woman should have them…blah, blah, blah…and then she interrupted me.
“Have you ever had one?”
My mouth was still open, but the only sound that came out was uhh…uhh.
My mind raced through every lame excuse I’ve used for not getting a mammogram. Like how I called once to make an appointment, but the line was busy.
Shoot. Without saying a word, my kid had shamed me into getting my first mammogram. This time the line wasn’t busy and I got an appointment only days away.
I was advised not to wear deodorant, powder, or lotion on my upper body on the day of the test. Just the idea of not being able to wear deodorant made me start to sweat. This whole thing was starting to stink.
Before I knew it, I was sitting in the waiting room at Radiology. The woman behind the counter was wearing a pink sweater. Ugh. And pink nail polish. Figures. She probably had pink M&Ms hidden in her desk drawer. I wasn’t nervous a bit.
They called my name, and told me to change into a front opening hospital top. The technician was a nice lady who looked a little like my mom. She asked me if I had implants. I took that as a compliment. So what if she hadn’t even glanced up from her paperwork.
She asked questions to determine my breast cancer risk factors. I wasn’t worried. I knew that breastfeeding lowers your risk substantially, which is why I’m still nursing the eight year old.
That was a joke.
I unveiled the girls and the tech went to work. I must say we became quite chummy during that encounter. She pushed and prodded, heaved and hoed, arranged and decorated. When the “presentation” was to her satisfaction, the machine flattened me out to the size of a medium pizza with just a single pepperoni.
She said one word, but she stretched it out like an arty French photographer. “Bee-you-ti-fullll!” Wow! Beautiful? Was she talking about the x-ray or me? Actually, I didn’t care. I was ready for my next close-up.
We did the other side. We were a team now, Team Mammo. She asked me if it was too uncomfortable. I was ready to show her the baby-with-sharp-teeth scars and then thought better of it. I’m sure she’s seen it all—doubled. So I said no it didn’t hurt. Squeeze away.
The right side got a “Bee-you-ti-fulll!” also and the symmetry wasn’t lost on me. Then like speed dating, it was over with a “We’ll call you.”
It sounded like she really meant it. I was tickled pink.
Then pink came along and ruined everything.
Hey, I’m all for helping “Find a Cure for Breast Cancer” and “Save 2nd Base” but couldn’t they have picked a nice spring month for their pink blitz? We “autumns” have been waiting all year to finally match our outfits to our skin tones. So if I donate twenty bucks, can I wear hunter green or a nice deep russet guilt-free?
My middle child came home last week and declared she would never wear pink again. That seemed a little militant for someone who owned quite a few lead-coated pink plastic toys from China—and wasn’t willing to give them up. She did promise not to lick them.
But what about her favorite camouflage pink skirt? She’d forgotten about that. This is the kid who thinks camouflage is the new black. It goes with every outfit, every occasion. Would she stick to her guns and give up her flirty camo skirt?
I wondered where she got this sudden aversion to pink. Did she witness some poor, hapless student barf up Pepto Bismo at school? I could see how that would be enough to prune pink from the your wardrobe.
So what’s the deal with pink, I asked.
She looked around to see if her sisters were eavesdropping and dropped her voice to a whisper, “I know what it stands for.” She giggled and pointed to her washboard chest.
I spilled the beans on pink--explaining how it stands for curing breast cancer, not the actual breasts themselves. She wanted to know how they cure it. I told her everything I knew which pretty much boiled down to one word: mammograms.
I told her how important they were…blah, blah, blah…how every woman should have them…blah, blah, blah…and then she interrupted me.
“Have you ever had one?”
My mouth was still open, but the only sound that came out was uhh…uhh.
My mind raced through every lame excuse I’ve used for not getting a mammogram. Like how I called once to make an appointment, but the line was busy.
Shoot. Without saying a word, my kid had shamed me into getting my first mammogram. This time the line wasn’t busy and I got an appointment only days away.
I was advised not to wear deodorant, powder, or lotion on my upper body on the day of the test. Just the idea of not being able to wear deodorant made me start to sweat. This whole thing was starting to stink.
Before I knew it, I was sitting in the waiting room at Radiology. The woman behind the counter was wearing a pink sweater. Ugh. And pink nail polish. Figures. She probably had pink M&Ms hidden in her desk drawer. I wasn’t nervous a bit.
They called my name, and told me to change into a front opening hospital top. The technician was a nice lady who looked a little like my mom. She asked me if I had implants. I took that as a compliment. So what if she hadn’t even glanced up from her paperwork.
She asked questions to determine my breast cancer risk factors. I wasn’t worried. I knew that breastfeeding lowers your risk substantially, which is why I’m still nursing the eight year old.
That was a joke.
I unveiled the girls and the tech went to work. I must say we became quite chummy during that encounter. She pushed and prodded, heaved and hoed, arranged and decorated. When the “presentation” was to her satisfaction, the machine flattened me out to the size of a medium pizza with just a single pepperoni.
She said one word, but she stretched it out like an arty French photographer. “Bee-you-ti-fullll!” Wow! Beautiful? Was she talking about the x-ray or me? Actually, I didn’t care. I was ready for my next close-up.
We did the other side. We were a team now, Team Mammo. She asked me if it was too uncomfortable. I was ready to show her the baby-with-sharp-teeth scars and then thought better of it. I’m sure she’s seen it all—doubled. So I said no it didn’t hurt. Squeeze away.
The right side got a “Bee-you-ti-fulll!” also and the symmetry wasn’t lost on me. Then like speed dating, it was over with a “We’ll call you.”
It sounded like she really meant it. I was tickled pink.
It was a Crazy Party!
I was born in San Diego. Maybe that’s why I return for my birthday, like a trout swimming upstream against terrible odds and a heavy current to reach that mythic birthplace.
Also my sister lives there and she will babysit.
It would be a civilized adult weekend of quiet and reflection. The hotel let us in early—before we had a chance to dump—I mean drop off the kids—so we had them in tow.
All employees wore black outfits with mirrored shades. No one looked over twenty-two. There was a Prius displayed prominently outside the lobby.
I translated all that to mean “We are a young, green, and rockin’ cool hotel.” Memorabilia from rock stars was framed and autographed. I felt old. After all, my husband and I were the only people in the hotel who remembered when Mick Jagger actually looked like that.
We followed neon blue lights embedded in the floor to the elevator. The walls were all red glass except for one that was shattered, as if someone had put his fist through it.
I lectured the girls on taking care of things as we all stared at the spider web of cracks. I was bummed that a brand new hotel was already busted up. My husband said nothing.
The doors opened to our floor. Big fans were blowing, wallpaper was pulled up, baseboards and drywall had been cut away. I didn’t think twice about it. I know how construction goes.
Our room was modern, sexy, and wild. The huge rain shower was separated from the living room by only frosted panels of glass. Same thing with the toilet. Privacy is so old-fashioned.
There were all sorts of provocatively packaged goodies you could buy. Everything from jelly beans to sensual candles and more. I felt like a minesweeper with the kids there. “Don’t open that drawer!” But they were focused on the spinning barstools and flat-panel televisions. The platform bed was cool until I whacked my shin on the corner.
I understand now the power of provocative lighting. The artwork was backlit. The bed had built-in spotlights—I mean reading lamps. Even the iron glowed neon pink. I couldn’t wait to get rid of the children.
We headed back out, in a different elevator. This one had the same broken glass. My husband smirked as it dawned on me it was all a ruse. Then some guy got on and told us there had been a flood on the upper floors, hence the big fans and ruined wallpaper.
I asked the black-clad girl at the front desk what happened. She sighed heavily, “It was a crazy party…”
Wow! I relayed the info to my husband. He laughed and said probably a pipe burst. He didn’t call me gullible.
What a gift! I had stumbled on the perfect excuse for any occasion. I won’t ever sound lame again, just wild, young and sexy.
And as for that big bruise on my shin…well, it was a crazy party.
Also my sister lives there and she will babysit.
It would be a civilized adult weekend of quiet and reflection. The hotel let us in early—before we had a chance to dump—I mean drop off the kids—so we had them in tow.
All employees wore black outfits with mirrored shades. No one looked over twenty-two. There was a Prius displayed prominently outside the lobby.
I translated all that to mean “We are a young, green, and rockin’ cool hotel.” Memorabilia from rock stars was framed and autographed. I felt old. After all, my husband and I were the only people in the hotel who remembered when Mick Jagger actually looked like that.
We followed neon blue lights embedded in the floor to the elevator. The walls were all red glass except for one that was shattered, as if someone had put his fist through it.
I lectured the girls on taking care of things as we all stared at the spider web of cracks. I was bummed that a brand new hotel was already busted up. My husband said nothing.
The doors opened to our floor. Big fans were blowing, wallpaper was pulled up, baseboards and drywall had been cut away. I didn’t think twice about it. I know how construction goes.
Our room was modern, sexy, and wild. The huge rain shower was separated from the living room by only frosted panels of glass. Same thing with the toilet. Privacy is so old-fashioned.
There were all sorts of provocatively packaged goodies you could buy. Everything from jelly beans to sensual candles and more. I felt like a minesweeper with the kids there. “Don’t open that drawer!” But they were focused on the spinning barstools and flat-panel televisions. The platform bed was cool until I whacked my shin on the corner.
I understand now the power of provocative lighting. The artwork was backlit. The bed had built-in spotlights—I mean reading lamps. Even the iron glowed neon pink. I couldn’t wait to get rid of the children.
We headed back out, in a different elevator. This one had the same broken glass. My husband smirked as it dawned on me it was all a ruse. Then some guy got on and told us there had been a flood on the upper floors, hence the big fans and ruined wallpaper.
I asked the black-clad girl at the front desk what happened. She sighed heavily, “It was a crazy party…”
Wow! I relayed the info to my husband. He laughed and said probably a pipe burst. He didn’t call me gullible.
What a gift! I had stumbled on the perfect excuse for any occasion. I won’t ever sound lame again, just wild, young and sexy.
And as for that big bruise on my shin…well, it was a crazy party.
Real Age and Other Lies
The Internet is a useful tool. Sure, everyone knows it’s great for breaking news about celebrities in rehab. But when I get enough dirt on Britney’s eternal quest for self-improvement, there are lots of great sites where I can focus on my own.
I stumbled across a site that offers a quiz that is supposed to tell my “real age” as opposed to my actual age. “Real” meaning how many miles I’ve got on my odometer so to speak vs. the number of hours I’ve got on the clock. So in theory, a person can be 40 going on 72 or 40 going on 34. Take your pick.
The quiz has so many questions that I aged noticeably in the time it took to finish it. The various categories snooped into my eating habits, exercise regimen, lifestyle choices, and degree of stress. Now I know how Brangelina and TomKat feel.
Paparazzi-like, it scrutinized my education, my bank account, my marriage, even my love life. It went so far to ask about that pimple on my chin. I still maintain it’s just an allergic reaction. Thankfully, the program is not sophisticated enough to factor in that double-chinned photo of me digging in at Christmas.
At the movie theater recently, the ticket-seller kid asked me if I wanted the senior discount. Sure, I was probably old enough to be his mother but not his GRANDMOTHER. That’s one reason why I was a little concerned going into this test. Do I really look 65? My mother doesn’t look 65!
I took the test. It was a relief to have my “real” age come back a decade younger than my driver’s license. One possible explanation is I lead an exemplary life when it comes to health, fitness and wellness.
Another possible explanation is that I lied.
I couldn’t help it. I really am not ready for ten percent off senior day. In fact, I’ll pay ten percent more if you card me and act like you mean it. So I felt compelled to figure the psychology behind each question and work it to my advantage.
For example, different ethnic backgrounds may be at higher or lower risk for various conditions. But which one should I choose? My mind went blank. All I could remember was the bestseller French Women Don’t Get Fat. That was no help. Even I know that French is not a race. It is more of an attitude.
My mouse hovers over the Native American box, hesitating. I could click it and not be completely fibbing. I’ve got a few drops of Native American blood but not enough for a piece of any Indian casino pie. It’s got to be a trick question. I sigh and check “Caucasian.”
Next it wants to know how many friends I have? Another pit of vipers. Is it a good thing to have a lot of friends or does that make me shallow? Do I have too few? Am I anti-social? How should I define friend?
I decide it depends on a multitude of factors. If it’s time to sell Girl Scout cookies, then each and every one of you is my friend and it is $4 a box. If you have a boat and will let me borrow it, you are my best friend. If my kid likes your kid, then I will at least be friendly. But there is no gray area. The choices are numerical, so I randomly pick five.
Stress is a category unto itself. Have I been seriously ill? Does seriously irritable count? Job change? Nope, still unemployed. New baby? Not that I noticed. But after watching the news about the full-term surprise, I’d better check to make sure. Lawsuit? I won three hundred bucks in small claims. Does that count? Deaths? Only Anna Nicole Smith that I can recall.
I think I knocked off a few years with the Stress Category. It would have been a whole different story if they had a “Remodel” box to tick or “Special Assessment by HOA” or even “Lives with a Preteen in Low-Rise Jeans.” My recent favorite, “Major Pipe Leak” was also absent. That’s the one where four months of water drains straight to the ocean in about four days. Technically, if it isn’t on the list, I’m not stressed.
I’m on a roll now. I eat tons of veggies, exercise strenuously, take my vitamins, and never yo-yo in my weight. I hit “Submit” and the years melt away. Wow. I feel younger already.
I stumbled across a site that offers a quiz that is supposed to tell my “real age” as opposed to my actual age. “Real” meaning how many miles I’ve got on my odometer so to speak vs. the number of hours I’ve got on the clock. So in theory, a person can be 40 going on 72 or 40 going on 34. Take your pick.
The quiz has so many questions that I aged noticeably in the time it took to finish it. The various categories snooped into my eating habits, exercise regimen, lifestyle choices, and degree of stress. Now I know how Brangelina and TomKat feel.
Paparazzi-like, it scrutinized my education, my bank account, my marriage, even my love life. It went so far to ask about that pimple on my chin. I still maintain it’s just an allergic reaction. Thankfully, the program is not sophisticated enough to factor in that double-chinned photo of me digging in at Christmas.
At the movie theater recently, the ticket-seller kid asked me if I wanted the senior discount. Sure, I was probably old enough to be his mother but not his GRANDMOTHER. That’s one reason why I was a little concerned going into this test. Do I really look 65? My mother doesn’t look 65!
I took the test. It was a relief to have my “real” age come back a decade younger than my driver’s license. One possible explanation is I lead an exemplary life when it comes to health, fitness and wellness.
Another possible explanation is that I lied.
I couldn’t help it. I really am not ready for ten percent off senior day. In fact, I’ll pay ten percent more if you card me and act like you mean it. So I felt compelled to figure the psychology behind each question and work it to my advantage.
For example, different ethnic backgrounds may be at higher or lower risk for various conditions. But which one should I choose? My mind went blank. All I could remember was the bestseller French Women Don’t Get Fat. That was no help. Even I know that French is not a race. It is more of an attitude.
My mouse hovers over the Native American box, hesitating. I could click it and not be completely fibbing. I’ve got a few drops of Native American blood but not enough for a piece of any Indian casino pie. It’s got to be a trick question. I sigh and check “Caucasian.”
Next it wants to know how many friends I have? Another pit of vipers. Is it a good thing to have a lot of friends or does that make me shallow? Do I have too few? Am I anti-social? How should I define friend?
I decide it depends on a multitude of factors. If it’s time to sell Girl Scout cookies, then each and every one of you is my friend and it is $4 a box. If you have a boat and will let me borrow it, you are my best friend. If my kid likes your kid, then I will at least be friendly. But there is no gray area. The choices are numerical, so I randomly pick five.
Stress is a category unto itself. Have I been seriously ill? Does seriously irritable count? Job change? Nope, still unemployed. New baby? Not that I noticed. But after watching the news about the full-term surprise, I’d better check to make sure. Lawsuit? I won three hundred bucks in small claims. Does that count? Deaths? Only Anna Nicole Smith that I can recall.
I think I knocked off a few years with the Stress Category. It would have been a whole different story if they had a “Remodel” box to tick or “Special Assessment by HOA” or even “Lives with a Preteen in Low-Rise Jeans.” My recent favorite, “Major Pipe Leak” was also absent. That’s the one where four months of water drains straight to the ocean in about four days. Technically, if it isn’t on the list, I’m not stressed.
I’m on a roll now. I eat tons of veggies, exercise strenuously, take my vitamins, and never yo-yo in my weight. I hit “Submit” and the years melt away. Wow. I feel younger already.
Married to a Geek
I married a geek before geeks were cool.
Now suddenly they are hot stuff. I don’t know when exactly the tide turned. Was it the underdog appeal of Napoleon Dynamite, achieving the impossible in The 40 Year Old Virgin, or the childlike appeal of Will Farrell?
The tide has turned into a tidal wave. Geek is hot. And I am married to one. Woo-hoo!
If you are like me, you are thinking the time is ripe to embrace your inner geekness. And yes, girls can be geeks too. Don’t believe me? I have two words for you: Ugly Betty.
So what exactly is a geek?
In high school, I would have said a geek is socially a step behind, an outsider who didn’t keep up with the crowd. Now I wonder if geeks weren’t actually a step ahead, not bothering to follow the crowd because it simply held no allure.
The most obvious trait of geekhood is a ferociously passionate interest in something. Whether it’s computers, vintage pac-man games, obscure poetry, or baseball stats, geeks dive in and don’t surface—often for a lifetime.
I knew one woman who devoted her entire life to the study of one of Shakespeare’s comedies. Not all of them. Just one. She was an As You Like It geek. Presumably, she still is.
My husband, on the other hand, is a car geek. And since geeks are by nature specialists, that means that while my husband enjoys car races, he’s not a Nascar or a Formula 1 geek. He just loves the cars themselves.
He subscribes to at least six car magazines. When he dreams, he can’t remember who showed up or what they did but he can tell you what car they were driving.
For him, there’s no better fun that driving interesting cars, talking about cars, reading about cars, and best of all—contemplating the next car in the garage.
Another geek quality is a lack of interest in keeping up with the neighbors. Geeks aren’t trendy. Not only do they not care about Paris Hilton; they care even less what bag she is carrying.
If the geek in question is wearing a really cool vintage Pink Floyd T-shirt from “The Wall” tour, it is because he has owned it for several decades and it is still in the rotation. So they don’t have a BMW in the driveway to impress you. If they have one, they are a car geek. Then, they may have four.
When I was going to college, I worked at Sav-On in Laguna Beach. Several years ago, an older man would regularly come in to shop. He would buy 3/$1.00 toothbrushes and drive home in his beat-up station wagon that probably hadn’t seen a wax job since 1975.
I would not even remember him except for one thing. He was my boss, Sam Skaggs, the founder of retail conglomerate American Stores.
You sure wouldn’t know it from the items in his basket. He wasn’t purchasing champagne and tooling down PCH in a Ferrari. Instead he was busy buying salmon on sale and donating $100 million dollars to the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego. Clearly, Sam definitely qualified as a geek.
Howie Makler, owner of Howie’s Game Shack in Mission Viejo hangs out with gaming geeks all day and long into the night. What he found is that geeks have gone mainstream. “Being a geek is no longer considered geeky,” said Makler. “I’ve got jocks that are geeks.”
Makler also notes that video gaming geeks are not nerds with useless, overdeveloped skills but rather consummate problem solvers. “I’d go out of my way to hire gamers because they have the skill sets that I, as an employer, want. Gamers are less frustrated because they know there are a hundred ways to complete a task.” Translated: geeks don’t give up.
The stereotype of the geek living in his parent’s garage is really a myth. Geeks are generally highly skilled and successful in their fields.
Even though my husband was wearing a mom-knitted sweater when I met him, he was driving a vintage Corvette with a 454 engine. I eventually got rid of the sweater and most of the dweeb wardrobe. He sold the car for triple what he paid for it.
Sure we have 35 years of Road & Track magazines out in the garage, but it’s a small price to pay to keep my geek happy.
Who knows? Maybe our kids will turn out to be geeks.
Now suddenly they are hot stuff. I don’t know when exactly the tide turned. Was it the underdog appeal of Napoleon Dynamite, achieving the impossible in The 40 Year Old Virgin, or the childlike appeal of Will Farrell?
The tide has turned into a tidal wave. Geek is hot. And I am married to one. Woo-hoo!
If you are like me, you are thinking the time is ripe to embrace your inner geekness. And yes, girls can be geeks too. Don’t believe me? I have two words for you: Ugly Betty.
So what exactly is a geek?
In high school, I would have said a geek is socially a step behind, an outsider who didn’t keep up with the crowd. Now I wonder if geeks weren’t actually a step ahead, not bothering to follow the crowd because it simply held no allure.
The most obvious trait of geekhood is a ferociously passionate interest in something. Whether it’s computers, vintage pac-man games, obscure poetry, or baseball stats, geeks dive in and don’t surface—often for a lifetime.
I knew one woman who devoted her entire life to the study of one of Shakespeare’s comedies. Not all of them. Just one. She was an As You Like It geek. Presumably, she still is.
My husband, on the other hand, is a car geek. And since geeks are by nature specialists, that means that while my husband enjoys car races, he’s not a Nascar or a Formula 1 geek. He just loves the cars themselves.
He subscribes to at least six car magazines. When he dreams, he can’t remember who showed up or what they did but he can tell you what car they were driving.
For him, there’s no better fun that driving interesting cars, talking about cars, reading about cars, and best of all—contemplating the next car in the garage.
Another geek quality is a lack of interest in keeping up with the neighbors. Geeks aren’t trendy. Not only do they not care about Paris Hilton; they care even less what bag she is carrying.
If the geek in question is wearing a really cool vintage Pink Floyd T-shirt from “The Wall” tour, it is because he has owned it for several decades and it is still in the rotation. So they don’t have a BMW in the driveway to impress you. If they have one, they are a car geek. Then, they may have four.
When I was going to college, I worked at Sav-On in Laguna Beach. Several years ago, an older man would regularly come in to shop. He would buy 3/$1.00 toothbrushes and drive home in his beat-up station wagon that probably hadn’t seen a wax job since 1975.
I would not even remember him except for one thing. He was my boss, Sam Skaggs, the founder of retail conglomerate American Stores.
You sure wouldn’t know it from the items in his basket. He wasn’t purchasing champagne and tooling down PCH in a Ferrari. Instead he was busy buying salmon on sale and donating $100 million dollars to the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego. Clearly, Sam definitely qualified as a geek.
Howie Makler, owner of Howie’s Game Shack in Mission Viejo hangs out with gaming geeks all day and long into the night. What he found is that geeks have gone mainstream. “Being a geek is no longer considered geeky,” said Makler. “I’ve got jocks that are geeks.”
Makler also notes that video gaming geeks are not nerds with useless, overdeveloped skills but rather consummate problem solvers. “I’d go out of my way to hire gamers because they have the skill sets that I, as an employer, want. Gamers are less frustrated because they know there are a hundred ways to complete a task.” Translated: geeks don’t give up.
The stereotype of the geek living in his parent’s garage is really a myth. Geeks are generally highly skilled and successful in their fields.
Even though my husband was wearing a mom-knitted sweater when I met him, he was driving a vintage Corvette with a 454 engine. I eventually got rid of the sweater and most of the dweeb wardrobe. He sold the car for triple what he paid for it.
Sure we have 35 years of Road & Track magazines out in the garage, but it’s a small price to pay to keep my geek happy.
Who knows? Maybe our kids will turn out to be geeks.
My Sweet Miracle
I love a miracle as much as the next guy. It isn’t possible to pick up a December magazine that isn’t chock full of miracles. That’s how I got a case of miracle envy.
I wanted a miracle and I wanted it by deadline so I could brag. For a week I’ve been wishing really, really hard.
Nothing happened. Not even a happy coincidence.
Then last night I got it. My middle child announced, “Fifth grade is the easiest grade so far.” Casual conversation for most kids, but from her those words were my own personal miracle.
For some kids, learning doesn’t come easy. School is a frustrating experience and failure lurks behind every assignment. They try to compensate by picking up information in alternate ways, but it’s hard not to feel stupid when they just can’t “get it” when they try so hard.
My daughter is one of these kids. She loved her teachers, loved her friends, but hated school. She’d come home exhausted and then struggle for hours with homework that should have taken minutes.
Her standardized scores varied by as much as 80%. Spelling was torture. Reading was to be avoided at all costs, tasks that required a good sense of directionality like clock reading and shoe-tying were incredibly frustrating.
She had trouble remembering addresses and phone numbers. She often transposed numbers, reversed letters, and missed words and parts of words when reading.
Things were getting worse. In desperation, I called my Reading Specialist friend Sharon. She’d tell me the truth. What she said scared me. She told me to hang up RIGHT NOW and call an Optometric Vision Therapist. She recommended Dr. Dennis Spiro in Whittier and was impressed with his honesty and results.
I could only think one thing: Whittier is a long drive.
But we did it. My daughter was tested thoroughly and Dr. Spiro
recommended 32 45-minute sessions of Vision Therapy. He did not promise a miracle, but he expected she would be at grade level at the end. Glory Hallelujah!
Dr. Spiro explained how vision is developmental. It is learned, just like walking. Seeing has to do with the eyes, but vision has to do with the brain.
The number one red flag is a bright child who does not like to read.
Although my daughter has 20/20 vision, she had difficulty focusing and problems with her peripheral vision. We signed up and noticed immediate improvement. She knew now she wasn’t dumb. The words stopped jumping around and reading became easier. The long drive gave plenty of practice time.
She retained numbers better, transposed letters less often and became more confident. She retained numbers and spelling improved. Here reading rose two grade levels. We finished in September. Fifth grade would be the test.
Her teachers challenge her every day and she is succeeding brilliantly. She feels good about her accomplishments and loves school. Now—for the first time--she sees school as easy.
All I see is a big fat miracle.
I wanted a miracle and I wanted it by deadline so I could brag. For a week I’ve been wishing really, really hard.
Nothing happened. Not even a happy coincidence.
Then last night I got it. My middle child announced, “Fifth grade is the easiest grade so far.” Casual conversation for most kids, but from her those words were my own personal miracle.
For some kids, learning doesn’t come easy. School is a frustrating experience and failure lurks behind every assignment. They try to compensate by picking up information in alternate ways, but it’s hard not to feel stupid when they just can’t “get it” when they try so hard.
My daughter is one of these kids. She loved her teachers, loved her friends, but hated school. She’d come home exhausted and then struggle for hours with homework that should have taken minutes.
Her standardized scores varied by as much as 80%. Spelling was torture. Reading was to be avoided at all costs, tasks that required a good sense of directionality like clock reading and shoe-tying were incredibly frustrating.
She had trouble remembering addresses and phone numbers. She often transposed numbers, reversed letters, and missed words and parts of words when reading.
Things were getting worse. In desperation, I called my Reading Specialist friend Sharon. She’d tell me the truth. What she said scared me. She told me to hang up RIGHT NOW and call an Optometric Vision Therapist. She recommended Dr. Dennis Spiro in Whittier and was impressed with his honesty and results.
I could only think one thing: Whittier is a long drive.
But we did it. My daughter was tested thoroughly and Dr. Spiro
recommended 32 45-minute sessions of Vision Therapy. He did not promise a miracle, but he expected she would be at grade level at the end. Glory Hallelujah!
Dr. Spiro explained how vision is developmental. It is learned, just like walking. Seeing has to do with the eyes, but vision has to do with the brain.
The number one red flag is a bright child who does not like to read.
Although my daughter has 20/20 vision, she had difficulty focusing and problems with her peripheral vision. We signed up and noticed immediate improvement. She knew now she wasn’t dumb. The words stopped jumping around and reading became easier. The long drive gave plenty of practice time.
She retained numbers better, transposed letters less often and became more confident. She retained numbers and spelling improved. Here reading rose two grade levels. We finished in September. Fifth grade would be the test.
Her teachers challenge her every day and she is succeeding brilliantly. She feels good about her accomplishments and loves school. Now—for the first time--she sees school as easy.
All I see is a big fat miracle.
Hip Hop Mama
I liked everything about my workout routine. I especially liked the “routine” part. It was comfy. I had the moves down so I never felt stupid—unless I forgot to unplug my headphones from the elliptical trainer before I disembarked. Then all bets were off.
Because I was in my “zone,” a place where I didn’t have to think too much about my own fitness, I had plenty of time to critique those around me. Day in and day out, the same people did the same exercises. I wondered why they never looked any better.
They probably wondered the same thing about me.
Could it be my workout groove was simply a workout rut in denial? Could I handle something new, something different, something that had “Foolish at Your Age” written all over it?
Uh, maybe. If somebody paid me.
A Hip-Hop class at the gym fit the risk bill perfectly. Dread alone raised my pulse rate to target range. My kids snickered and asked if they could tag along and videotape. It’s always good to have family support.
I aimed to be first so I could nab some prime real estate in the back. Unfortunately, only seven other people showed, so there was only “front” available. I think their parents dropped them off.
The girl next to me looked like the frail young sister in Little Women. She was wearing baggy black pants exactly like mine except hers rode about four inches lower on her hips. I had a mom urge to yank them up, but I restrained myself. After all the website described this class as “urban” and “street.” I didn’t want to dis’ her. She might be packin’ heat.
It was difficult to relax in a room covered in mirrors. Wherever I looked, there I was. I felt like my flaws were in Surround Sound and the music hadn’t even started. It was unnerving.
The teacher arrived wearing a funky bandana. Part of the Hip-Hop package, I assumed. She put on loud, pulsating music. As a warm-up, Frail Girl dropped to the floor and started spinning on her head. I almost hyperventilated until I realized no one else was spinning.
Oh, a gym show-off. Seen that before.
The teacher walked us through some moves. She went slowly at first and repeated often. I followed, stiff but game. Some of the steps were actually relics from the disco era. I was probably the only person here who knew that firsthand.
She added more moves then speeded them up. I felt like a teenager learning stick shift on a hill. It took all my concentration just to stay a half-count behind. Every once in a while, I got a few beats exactly right. I couldn’t help but grin in triumph. This was fun!
Afterwards, I felt exhilarated. I was a complete success at Trying Something New and well, a complete dork at Hip Hop. But that’s ok. I’ll be back. I think I’ll dump my rut and keep my groove. Besides, belly dancing and Cowboy Boogie sound fun…
Because I was in my “zone,” a place where I didn’t have to think too much about my own fitness, I had plenty of time to critique those around me. Day in and day out, the same people did the same exercises. I wondered why they never looked any better.
They probably wondered the same thing about me.
Could it be my workout groove was simply a workout rut in denial? Could I handle something new, something different, something that had “Foolish at Your Age” written all over it?
Uh, maybe. If somebody paid me.
A Hip-Hop class at the gym fit the risk bill perfectly. Dread alone raised my pulse rate to target range. My kids snickered and asked if they could tag along and videotape. It’s always good to have family support.
I aimed to be first so I could nab some prime real estate in the back. Unfortunately, only seven other people showed, so there was only “front” available. I think their parents dropped them off.
The girl next to me looked like the frail young sister in Little Women. She was wearing baggy black pants exactly like mine except hers rode about four inches lower on her hips. I had a mom urge to yank them up, but I restrained myself. After all the website described this class as “urban” and “street.” I didn’t want to dis’ her. She might be packin’ heat.
It was difficult to relax in a room covered in mirrors. Wherever I looked, there I was. I felt like my flaws were in Surround Sound and the music hadn’t even started. It was unnerving.
The teacher arrived wearing a funky bandana. Part of the Hip-Hop package, I assumed. She put on loud, pulsating music. As a warm-up, Frail Girl dropped to the floor and started spinning on her head. I almost hyperventilated until I realized no one else was spinning.
Oh, a gym show-off. Seen that before.
The teacher walked us through some moves. She went slowly at first and repeated often. I followed, stiff but game. Some of the steps were actually relics from the disco era. I was probably the only person here who knew that firsthand.
She added more moves then speeded them up. I felt like a teenager learning stick shift on a hill. It took all my concentration just to stay a half-count behind. Every once in a while, I got a few beats exactly right. I couldn’t help but grin in triumph. This was fun!
Afterwards, I felt exhilarated. I was a complete success at Trying Something New and well, a complete dork at Hip Hop. But that’s ok. I’ll be back. I think I’ll dump my rut and keep my groove. Besides, belly dancing and Cowboy Boogie sound fun…
All that Glitters...
I just love the Holiday Catalog Season. Every day for a month my mailbox is jammed packed with shiny-paged offers from every retailer in North America. It’s a beautiful thing.
One benefit is it makes the bills look insignificant in comparison. They practically get lost in all that bulk. With only one or two flimsy Visa payment reminders, I feel as if my credit lines expand, stretching to Lands’ End, or Bed Bath and Beyond, or even The Territory Ahead—places where “exceptional gifts” await.
It takes the kids two or three trips to bring in the mail. On a really heavy day, they sometimes form a human chain to ferry the catalogs from mailbox to kitchen counter. They don’t mind. They appreciate fine merchandising too.
Sometimes they get to the catalogs before I do, and thoughtfully circle items they think will complete their happiness. I’m always interested to see what captures their interest. For example, if it’s circled in red crayon, then I know my youngest has been making a list and checking it twice.
The Pier 1 catalog had red circles on almost every page of holiday décor. Gosh, I didn’t know we were low on that stuff. When you have a “Christmas Closet” like I do, you just assume you are set for life on jolly snowmen and joyous angels. Apparently not.
The red crayon suggested a towering tabletop blue and gold sequined tree presparkled for my decorating convenience. Only $60. Although the tree looked like something out of the girls’ dress-up box or West Hollywood—take your pick--I was taken with the “pre-decorated” concept.
Think of the hours saved if my holiday décor was already done. If we didn’t have to take every little Hallmark classic car ornament out of its little box and bubble wrap and carefully hang it on the tree and then talk about why the ‘57 Corvette is so much better than the ’58, I could go hole up somewhere with a nice game of solitaire.
So that’s how I ended up almost dialing the 1-800 number when I realized the towering sequin tree was the exact size of my vacuum, which also resides in the Christmas Closet. There wasn’t room for both. Much as I’d like to permanently replace the vacuum with the Sequin Tree, I choked.
Two pages later, a towering white feather tree was circled. What was this, a chance at redemption?
Described as a “wisp of feathers and glitter,” it was even taller than the sequin tree. Unfortunately for the unsuspecting kid who circled it so carefully, they lost me at “glitter.”
I hate glitter. Glitter should come with a warning. They should have stages of glitter--like cancer. Once you have glitter in your house, you can never really get rid of it. You are always recovering, but never truly glitter-free again.
I don’t know why, but even the hint of glitter ruined the whole Holiday Catalog Season for me. At least there’s still the Internet.
One benefit is it makes the bills look insignificant in comparison. They practically get lost in all that bulk. With only one or two flimsy Visa payment reminders, I feel as if my credit lines expand, stretching to Lands’ End, or Bed Bath and Beyond, or even The Territory Ahead—places where “exceptional gifts” await.
It takes the kids two or three trips to bring in the mail. On a really heavy day, they sometimes form a human chain to ferry the catalogs from mailbox to kitchen counter. They don’t mind. They appreciate fine merchandising too.
Sometimes they get to the catalogs before I do, and thoughtfully circle items they think will complete their happiness. I’m always interested to see what captures their interest. For example, if it’s circled in red crayon, then I know my youngest has been making a list and checking it twice.
The Pier 1 catalog had red circles on almost every page of holiday décor. Gosh, I didn’t know we were low on that stuff. When you have a “Christmas Closet” like I do, you just assume you are set for life on jolly snowmen and joyous angels. Apparently not.
The red crayon suggested a towering tabletop blue and gold sequined tree presparkled for my decorating convenience. Only $60. Although the tree looked like something out of the girls’ dress-up box or West Hollywood—take your pick--I was taken with the “pre-decorated” concept.
Think of the hours saved if my holiday décor was already done. If we didn’t have to take every little Hallmark classic car ornament out of its little box and bubble wrap and carefully hang it on the tree and then talk about why the ‘57 Corvette is so much better than the ’58, I could go hole up somewhere with a nice game of solitaire.
So that’s how I ended up almost dialing the 1-800 number when I realized the towering sequin tree was the exact size of my vacuum, which also resides in the Christmas Closet. There wasn’t room for both. Much as I’d like to permanently replace the vacuum with the Sequin Tree, I choked.
Two pages later, a towering white feather tree was circled. What was this, a chance at redemption?
Described as a “wisp of feathers and glitter,” it was even taller than the sequin tree. Unfortunately for the unsuspecting kid who circled it so carefully, they lost me at “glitter.”
I hate glitter. Glitter should come with a warning. They should have stages of glitter--like cancer. Once you have glitter in your house, you can never really get rid of it. You are always recovering, but never truly glitter-free again.
I don’t know why, but even the hint of glitter ruined the whole Holiday Catalog Season for me. At least there’s still the Internet.
Life is a Beach
I always wanted to live on the sand. And now I do.
It’s not exactly the lifestyle I envisioned. I was thinking beachfront entertaining, relaxing sunsets dipping behind Catalina, crashing waves lulling me to sleep. That’s not what I got.
I got sand.
I guess when I was making my wish for the OC good life, I forgot to attach an ocean to my dream of beachfront paradise. So my wish has come true. I got the beach part—just not the water part.
As I write this column, I’ve got cubic yards of sand under and between my toes. The only problem is I haven’t moved. How is it possible to live on the sand without living on the beach?
Easy. Enroll your kids in Junior Lifeguards. Your children will cart home more sand than a pack mule. Although they will appear to be wearing nothing but a rash guard and a whole lot of sunscreen, in reality they will be concealing twenty pounds of sand on their person. Each and every day.
Every afternoon in beach parking lots up and down the coast—from T-Street to Thousand Steps--moms are making every attempt to stop sand from infiltrating their front lines. I think the hypothesis is if it doesn’t get in the SUV, it doesn’t get in the house. These women come armed with towels, talcum powder, leaf blowers, and haz-mat suits. All to no avail.
Sand knows no boundaries.
The kids don’t even realize they are smuggling it home to be deposited on the fresh, clean sheets of your king-size Sealy Posture-pedic. Yelling “Who got sand in my bed?” will only bring blank stares. How would they know there are millions of grains clinging stubbornly to their follicles?
Unfortunately no one has yet trained a sand-sniffing dog to roust out that kilo of Salt Creek Fine packed tight in the toes of their surf fins. Nope. You won’t find the contraband until it is ground into your hardwood floor, clogging your drain, or sifting out the lint filter of the dryer.
It’s also in the fridge, so you can be sure it’s going to be in your mouth before too long. It’s in the library books (sorry), and it’s so deep in the back seat I suspect an ancient civilization may be buried under there.
All this sand is making me a little crazy. I’ve been coming up with some good theories, all of them involving conspiracies. My top pick points the finger directly at Junior Lifeguards.
Junior Lifeguard leaders are notorious for their sense of fun. Last year, one assistant allowed himself to be duct-taped to a surfboard and covered with Cheetos for a wild critter buffet. They play jokes on each other, the kids, so why not the parents?
I just bet they sit around thinking of ways to get the maximum amount of sand per square inch stuck to each of their charges. I’m surprised I haven’t seen a backpack shoveled full of sand get dragged up the hundred-and-something steps of “Stairway to Heaven” at Strands and dumped in my trunk like a dead body.
Casually, I asked my kids if they play any sand games in Junior Guards. They looked at each other and shouted, “Corn Dogging!”
As I suspected, those leaders do sit around thinking of ways to laugh at my expense. The object of Corn Dogging is to get wet, then roll in the sand like a hot dog. Whoever has the thickest “batter” wins. Yummy. I’m surprised they haven’t added seaweed and called it a California Roll.
Next comes Sand Crabbing, an army crawl through shallow water, ostensibly to learn the features of the ocean floor but really a highly effective way to sandbag the pockets and linings of board shorts and bathing suits.
If they can still float, the kids are encouraged to swim out to buoys Big Bertha, Bob Marley, or Death Star and dive down for more handfuls of sand. The more sand they excavate, the fewer push-ups required. Notice a theme?
And then there is “Ostriching.” Trust me. You don’t want to know. But it is exactly what you are picturing.
There are a lot of summer beach programs out there to choose from. We chose one based on the quality, texture, and color of beach sand. Sure, safety and fun were important factors, and that’s why it’s our third year with US Ocean Safety.
But it’s even better when the sand matches your upholstery.
It’s not exactly the lifestyle I envisioned. I was thinking beachfront entertaining, relaxing sunsets dipping behind Catalina, crashing waves lulling me to sleep. That’s not what I got.
I got sand.
I guess when I was making my wish for the OC good life, I forgot to attach an ocean to my dream of beachfront paradise. So my wish has come true. I got the beach part—just not the water part.
As I write this column, I’ve got cubic yards of sand under and between my toes. The only problem is I haven’t moved. How is it possible to live on the sand without living on the beach?
Easy. Enroll your kids in Junior Lifeguards. Your children will cart home more sand than a pack mule. Although they will appear to be wearing nothing but a rash guard and a whole lot of sunscreen, in reality they will be concealing twenty pounds of sand on their person. Each and every day.
Every afternoon in beach parking lots up and down the coast—from T-Street to Thousand Steps--moms are making every attempt to stop sand from infiltrating their front lines. I think the hypothesis is if it doesn’t get in the SUV, it doesn’t get in the house. These women come armed with towels, talcum powder, leaf blowers, and haz-mat suits. All to no avail.
Sand knows no boundaries.
The kids don’t even realize they are smuggling it home to be deposited on the fresh, clean sheets of your king-size Sealy Posture-pedic. Yelling “Who got sand in my bed?” will only bring blank stares. How would they know there are millions of grains clinging stubbornly to their follicles?
Unfortunately no one has yet trained a sand-sniffing dog to roust out that kilo of Salt Creek Fine packed tight in the toes of their surf fins. Nope. You won’t find the contraband until it is ground into your hardwood floor, clogging your drain, or sifting out the lint filter of the dryer.
It’s also in the fridge, so you can be sure it’s going to be in your mouth before too long. It’s in the library books (sorry), and it’s so deep in the back seat I suspect an ancient civilization may be buried under there.
All this sand is making me a little crazy. I’ve been coming up with some good theories, all of them involving conspiracies. My top pick points the finger directly at Junior Lifeguards.
Junior Lifeguard leaders are notorious for their sense of fun. Last year, one assistant allowed himself to be duct-taped to a surfboard and covered with Cheetos for a wild critter buffet. They play jokes on each other, the kids, so why not the parents?
I just bet they sit around thinking of ways to get the maximum amount of sand per square inch stuck to each of their charges. I’m surprised I haven’t seen a backpack shoveled full of sand get dragged up the hundred-and-something steps of “Stairway to Heaven” at Strands and dumped in my trunk like a dead body.
Casually, I asked my kids if they play any sand games in Junior Guards. They looked at each other and shouted, “Corn Dogging!”
As I suspected, those leaders do sit around thinking of ways to laugh at my expense. The object of Corn Dogging is to get wet, then roll in the sand like a hot dog. Whoever has the thickest “batter” wins. Yummy. I’m surprised they haven’t added seaweed and called it a California Roll.
Next comes Sand Crabbing, an army crawl through shallow water, ostensibly to learn the features of the ocean floor but really a highly effective way to sandbag the pockets and linings of board shorts and bathing suits.
If they can still float, the kids are encouraged to swim out to buoys Big Bertha, Bob Marley, or Death Star and dive down for more handfuls of sand. The more sand they excavate, the fewer push-ups required. Notice a theme?
And then there is “Ostriching.” Trust me. You don’t want to know. But it is exactly what you are picturing.
There are a lot of summer beach programs out there to choose from. We chose one based on the quality, texture, and color of beach sand. Sure, safety and fun were important factors, and that’s why it’s our third year with US Ocean Safety.
But it’s even better when the sand matches your upholstery.
Death, Taxes...and Fitness
It comes every year, as constant as death and taxes. And for me, just as dreaded. I’m not talking about 1040s. I’m talking the Presidential Physical Fitness Challenge.
The program has lasted far longer than any president, which in my opinion is too bad. I have fond memories of failing it repeatedly as a kid. Now my children are taking the challenge and we shall see if I have passed on the Fitness Challenge Flunk Out gene.
I have one out of three kids who takes this process very seriously. I think she’s been brainwashed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. It is her nine-year-old intention to gather us into a flock of believers. In exercise, that is.
She cornered me while I was taking a little catnap on the couch and wanted to know how many curl-ups I could do in one minute. I was too foggy to ask her to define “curl-up” so I mumbled one hundred as I rolled over.
She wouldn’t go away, however. Next she wanted to know how many push-ups I could do. That was easy. Zero. Little Miss Fitness announced that zero was not an acceptable goal, so I changed it to one.
Last, she badgered me about how far I could reach past my toes. Well, that all depends what I’m reaching for. I once dropped my sunglasses but I didn’t have to reach past my toes because my shades fell in the toilet instead.
Anyway, I told her I could reach past my toes if I had enough incentive, but it had better be really good. She wrote my words down in a little notebook.
That evening she gathered us all together and said we were now going to practice for the Presidential Physical Fitness Challenge.
What?
See this is what happens when you don’t have cable. You sit around staring at the walls and each other until someone comes up with the lamebrained idea of exercise.
I tried to beg off with a “bad back,” but my husband thought it was a great idea. Probably because he can do more than one push-up. And so the P. (for Payne) Residential Physical Fitness Challenge was inaugurated.
Curl-ups were first on the torture agenda. I went last since I didn’t know what they were. Turns out it was just old-fashioned sit-ups. The numbers were coming in at 35-40 when Little Miss Drill Sergeant popped out fifty. I started to rethink my goal of one hundred.
My turn. I did my first curl-up. Oh—ouch! It hurt. I’d like to say it was the weight of my massive chest that made it so difficult to lift my upper body, but that would be an exaggeration. I barely churned out ten before collapsing in a heap, making excuses the whole time.
Push-ups were next. Little Miss Purple Belt did twenty ramrod straight. I asked if I could do girl push-ups. I guess that isn’t politically correct anymore since they didn’t know what I was talking about.
I assumed the position. My arms were shaking already. Everyone was shouting advice. "You need to go down!” Easy for them to say. Finally, someone put a pillow under my face so I wouldn’t break my nose with the impact and I once again collapsed in a pile.
Last was the V-stretch. This one we did together, sitting on the floor legs stretched out straight in front of us. According to Little Miss Workout Nazi our goal was five inches past our feet. I got to my ankles just fine. If I normally shaved my toes, then I would have reached them easily too.
I had an idea. I asked my daughter to find some Hostess Twinkies. My husband made a disparaging remark. That’s when I noticed he could only reach to the top of his dorky dress socks. And his knees looked suspiciously bent.
I couldn’t believe it. I was beating him! I took a deep breath, leaned into the exhale, and I was touching my toes. A few more breaths and I was substantially beyond my feet. If the Twinkies had been sitting there, they would have been history.
Little Miss Exercise Guru made up a chart and recorded our progress. Every night that week we hit the floor: timing, counting, holding each other’s feet and oh yeah, exercising. I’d made significant progress. I doubled my push-ups.
On Friday, our nine-year-old fitness fanatic came home from school with big news. She had passed the Presidential Physical Fitness Challenge with highest honors. Maybe she does takes after me…
The program has lasted far longer than any president, which in my opinion is too bad. I have fond memories of failing it repeatedly as a kid. Now my children are taking the challenge and we shall see if I have passed on the Fitness Challenge Flunk Out gene.
I have one out of three kids who takes this process very seriously. I think she’s been brainwashed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. It is her nine-year-old intention to gather us into a flock of believers. In exercise, that is.
She cornered me while I was taking a little catnap on the couch and wanted to know how many curl-ups I could do in one minute. I was too foggy to ask her to define “curl-up” so I mumbled one hundred as I rolled over.
She wouldn’t go away, however. Next she wanted to know how many push-ups I could do. That was easy. Zero. Little Miss Fitness announced that zero was not an acceptable goal, so I changed it to one.
Last, she badgered me about how far I could reach past my toes. Well, that all depends what I’m reaching for. I once dropped my sunglasses but I didn’t have to reach past my toes because my shades fell in the toilet instead.
Anyway, I told her I could reach past my toes if I had enough incentive, but it had better be really good. She wrote my words down in a little notebook.
That evening she gathered us all together and said we were now going to practice for the Presidential Physical Fitness Challenge.
What?
See this is what happens when you don’t have cable. You sit around staring at the walls and each other until someone comes up with the lamebrained idea of exercise.
I tried to beg off with a “bad back,” but my husband thought it was a great idea. Probably because he can do more than one push-up. And so the P. (for Payne) Residential Physical Fitness Challenge was inaugurated.
Curl-ups were first on the torture agenda. I went last since I didn’t know what they were. Turns out it was just old-fashioned sit-ups. The numbers were coming in at 35-40 when Little Miss Drill Sergeant popped out fifty. I started to rethink my goal of one hundred.
My turn. I did my first curl-up. Oh—ouch! It hurt. I’d like to say it was the weight of my massive chest that made it so difficult to lift my upper body, but that would be an exaggeration. I barely churned out ten before collapsing in a heap, making excuses the whole time.
Push-ups were next. Little Miss Purple Belt did twenty ramrod straight. I asked if I could do girl push-ups. I guess that isn’t politically correct anymore since they didn’t know what I was talking about.
I assumed the position. My arms were shaking already. Everyone was shouting advice. "You need to go down!” Easy for them to say. Finally, someone put a pillow under my face so I wouldn’t break my nose with the impact and I once again collapsed in a pile.
Last was the V-stretch. This one we did together, sitting on the floor legs stretched out straight in front of us. According to Little Miss Workout Nazi our goal was five inches past our feet. I got to my ankles just fine. If I normally shaved my toes, then I would have reached them easily too.
I had an idea. I asked my daughter to find some Hostess Twinkies. My husband made a disparaging remark. That’s when I noticed he could only reach to the top of his dorky dress socks. And his knees looked suspiciously bent.
I couldn’t believe it. I was beating him! I took a deep breath, leaned into the exhale, and I was touching my toes. A few more breaths and I was substantially beyond my feet. If the Twinkies had been sitting there, they would have been history.
Little Miss Exercise Guru made up a chart and recorded our progress. Every night that week we hit the floor: timing, counting, holding each other’s feet and oh yeah, exercising. I’d made significant progress. I doubled my push-ups.
On Friday, our nine-year-old fitness fanatic came home from school with big news. She had passed the Presidential Physical Fitness Challenge with highest honors. Maybe she does takes after me…
To Light a Fire (Under My Butt)
There’s nothing like Santa Ana winds, tinder dry brush and a little accelerant to light a fire under my butt.
I didn’t realize how unprepared I am for a raging inferno. There’s a lot I should be doing. Wildfire in Southern California is not unlike the SuperBowl. It comes around every year, gets excellent Nielsen ratings, and makes grown men cry. Therefore, I need to get smart and prep for FireStorm XXIV.
The good news is we got the chance to test the school district’s emergency information system. I am happy to report it worked great. Via a series of recorded messages, the superintendent notified us of school closures at every phone number and email address we have.
I asked my husband if he got the call at work. He said he did. It really bugged me that he’d pick up for the superintendent—and an interim one at that—while it seems I always get sent directly to voicemail. Go figure.
Still, the slew of school updates was a great opportunity to find the missing cordless phone wedged between the cushions on the couch. It reminded me to check my spam filters. I even thought I could hear the guy talking about poor air quality from one of my fillings.
I went to the gym regularly during the fires, but I thought it would be unhealthful to actually work out. I just wanted to watch what was burning on six different TV stations at once. The LA stations were fixated on Malibu, the San Diego stations had the tricky job of showing Qualcomm stadium without making it look fun, and the East Coast newscasters talked vaguely about Arrowhead and its famous apple orchards burning to apple crisp.
My guess is they meant Julian.
It was hard to know what was really going on. I could see distant giant plumes of smoke that I knew had to be Fallbrook burning. I knew this because my sister-in-law called me to tell me everything was crazy down there. She was being evacuated and on the way out she saw llamas corralled in the Rite Aid garden center.
Yeah, right.
Her car was loaded up to the roof liner with photo albums and clothes when the elementary school called and told her to pick up her kid. Unfortunately, there was no room left in the car.
A million photos of the kid, sure. But the kid herself? Sorry, no space. If only she’d gone digital a few years earlier…
I wanted to suggest the school bus simply swing by the llamas at Rite Aid for a quick student drop-off. But I hesitated. I didn’t know if the whole story was just the byproduct of accidentally inhaling a whole lot of really fine Fallbrook weed now going up in smoke.
So I kept my breathing mask on and my mouth shut.
What a perfect opportunity to take a household inventory for insurance purposes and decide what gets saved and what gets left in the dreaded event of a fire. They said on TV that you might only get 3-5 minutes to evacuate, so you need to know what to grab.
My problem is it would take me 3-5 minutes to find my car keys. I know this because it takes me 3-5 minutes to find my car keys every time I want to go somewhere. I assume running for my life would be no different. I’d probably be left with thirty seconds to grab the valuables.
I started looking around the house. What would I save? I worked my way from room to room, skipping the garage. That’s what happens when I get sent to voicemail one too many times.
It was depressing. There was no good stuff. No jewels or furs or bars of gold. No fancy electronics, no designer handbags. I’m an OC failure. I don’t even have any photo albums, only boxes of pictures I keep meaning to scrapbook.
My car would be empty, except for kids.
Next I reasoned it would be smart to photograph everything I own, you know, for replacement value. I took snaps of everything, even the insides of drawers, cupboards, and closets. I felt proud until I downloaded the photos to Costco.com for convenient warehouse pickup.
The photos clearly showed every storage spot was filled to the brim with junk. How could I show my face at Costco when all their Photo employees have seen the cluttered contents of my drawers? Now I knew how Paris and Pam felt. It’s so humiliating.
I know what to do. I’ll burn the photos.
I didn’t realize how unprepared I am for a raging inferno. There’s a lot I should be doing. Wildfire in Southern California is not unlike the SuperBowl. It comes around every year, gets excellent Nielsen ratings, and makes grown men cry. Therefore, I need to get smart and prep for FireStorm XXIV.
The good news is we got the chance to test the school district’s emergency information system. I am happy to report it worked great. Via a series of recorded messages, the superintendent notified us of school closures at every phone number and email address we have.
I asked my husband if he got the call at work. He said he did. It really bugged me that he’d pick up for the superintendent—and an interim one at that—while it seems I always get sent directly to voicemail. Go figure.
Still, the slew of school updates was a great opportunity to find the missing cordless phone wedged between the cushions on the couch. It reminded me to check my spam filters. I even thought I could hear the guy talking about poor air quality from one of my fillings.
I went to the gym regularly during the fires, but I thought it would be unhealthful to actually work out. I just wanted to watch what was burning on six different TV stations at once. The LA stations were fixated on Malibu, the San Diego stations had the tricky job of showing Qualcomm stadium without making it look fun, and the East Coast newscasters talked vaguely about Arrowhead and its famous apple orchards burning to apple crisp.
My guess is they meant Julian.
It was hard to know what was really going on. I could see distant giant plumes of smoke that I knew had to be Fallbrook burning. I knew this because my sister-in-law called me to tell me everything was crazy down there. She was being evacuated and on the way out she saw llamas corralled in the Rite Aid garden center.
Yeah, right.
Her car was loaded up to the roof liner with photo albums and clothes when the elementary school called and told her to pick up her kid. Unfortunately, there was no room left in the car.
A million photos of the kid, sure. But the kid herself? Sorry, no space. If only she’d gone digital a few years earlier…
I wanted to suggest the school bus simply swing by the llamas at Rite Aid for a quick student drop-off. But I hesitated. I didn’t know if the whole story was just the byproduct of accidentally inhaling a whole lot of really fine Fallbrook weed now going up in smoke.
So I kept my breathing mask on and my mouth shut.
What a perfect opportunity to take a household inventory for insurance purposes and decide what gets saved and what gets left in the dreaded event of a fire. They said on TV that you might only get 3-5 minutes to evacuate, so you need to know what to grab.
My problem is it would take me 3-5 minutes to find my car keys. I know this because it takes me 3-5 minutes to find my car keys every time I want to go somewhere. I assume running for my life would be no different. I’d probably be left with thirty seconds to grab the valuables.
I started looking around the house. What would I save? I worked my way from room to room, skipping the garage. That’s what happens when I get sent to voicemail one too many times.
It was depressing. There was no good stuff. No jewels or furs or bars of gold. No fancy electronics, no designer handbags. I’m an OC failure. I don’t even have any photo albums, only boxes of pictures I keep meaning to scrapbook.
My car would be empty, except for kids.
Next I reasoned it would be smart to photograph everything I own, you know, for replacement value. I took snaps of everything, even the insides of drawers, cupboards, and closets. I felt proud until I downloaded the photos to Costco.com for convenient warehouse pickup.
The photos clearly showed every storage spot was filled to the brim with junk. How could I show my face at Costco when all their Photo employees have seen the cluttered contents of my drawers? Now I knew how Paris and Pam felt. It’s so humiliating.
I know what to do. I’ll burn the photos.
Livin' la Vida Musical
Finally, a job I was qualified to do. I couldn’t believe my good luck that someone else hadn’t snapped up the opportunity. Sure, there was no pay involved but the perks sounded heavenly. Three days in the mountains with none of the distractions of home: no driving, no cooking, no cleaning, no laundry, and no errands. It almost qualified as a spa vacation…
Just me, fresh clean pine-scented breezes, a good book…and sixty singing teenagers to chaperone. I would be living my own personal Sound of Music with the concert choir from the Southern California Children’s Chorus.
Julie Andrews, eat your heart out.
I’ve never been on a chartered bus before, but I liked the idea of it. Reason #1 was there was a bathroom onboard. Woo-hoo! No need to ration the Aquafina or sit cross-legged through Corona. Reason #2 was this bus driver absolutely had to drive slower than my husband. Therefore, I could relax, listen to the kids sing, and enjoy the ride.
And I did enjoy the concept of riding the bus all the way until I actually boarded in Costa Mesa. I don’t know if it was the diesel fumes or the lack of air-conditioning or the sight of South Coast Plaza receding in the distance, but suddenly I wondered if this was really going to be the MGM musical experience I signed on for.
The bus driver did drive slower than my husband—about seventy miles per hour slower. That’s because she forgot her transponder. Trapped in the #2 lane on the 91. It seemed like a good time to break into song. Instead the jumping bean—I mean boy-- in front of me managed to ram my right knee twice. I wanted to cry, but we were in the Inland Empire now. Time to be tough.
We arrived after dark. Luckily my cabin had electricity, heat, and running water. It also had seven girls I was supposed to keep in order: three altos, four sopranos. What perfect timing for “Whistle While You Work” or a few bars of “The hills are alive with the sound of music.”
But no. Instead, they talked about “hotties.” I had to laugh out loud. For me, “hotties” is a difficult word to pronounce with a straight face. I think my guffaw might have offended my charges. They turned on me. “So what do you call a hot guy?”
I went back thirty years. “When I was your age, we called them foxes.”
They howled in disbelief. “You mean, like the animal?” I guess, in retrospect, it does sound sort of ridiculous. But no dumber than “hottie.”
Now that we had laughed at each other, we were sufficiently bonded. Maybe we could sing. It’d be like the sisters in “Fiddler on the Roof.” But no, they wanted to tell scary stories, worry about non-existent bears, and reminisce about preschooler cartoons. So that’s what we did.
The next morning we assembled in the cafeteria. There were other retreat groups there also, all adults. They were probably expecting quiet time to reflect over their scrambled eggs. Although we only took up about a third of the room, we made up for it in energy.
Ok, the kids were a little boisterous, kind of loud, slightly obnoxious in the way that only teenagers can be. We were getting looks from the other side of the room. They weren’t super friendly. They were probably praying, “Please God. Make them go home before lunch.” That was a good thing since this was a Christian Camp and prayer was encouraged.
The kitchen lady came out and asked for a volunteer to say the blessing. Our leader, Miss Lori, stood up and simply said, “We would like to sing our thanks.”
I didn’t know anything about this. Kids stood up all around me, nonchalant. No choir robes, no sheet music. Just rumpled teens in baseball hats and baggy sweats, some holding coffee, some leaning against their tables. They didn’t bother to move to the front of the room. They just opened their mouths.
And let the music pour out.
Heads jerked around. Eyes widened. Jaws dropped open. By some trick of sound, this rag-tag bunch had instantly transformed into angels singing in Latin from on high. Those folks on the other side of the room, who were only expecting a quick “amen,” were stunned.
There I was, sitting right in the middle of all this unexpected glorious music, magically part of it. It was truly a blessing. Then it was over and the teens were bolting for the bacon.
It’s great living in a musical. I can’t wait for “White Christmas.”
Just me, fresh clean pine-scented breezes, a good book…and sixty singing teenagers to chaperone. I would be living my own personal Sound of Music with the concert choir from the Southern California Children’s Chorus.
Julie Andrews, eat your heart out.
I’ve never been on a chartered bus before, but I liked the idea of it. Reason #1 was there was a bathroom onboard. Woo-hoo! No need to ration the Aquafina or sit cross-legged through Corona. Reason #2 was this bus driver absolutely had to drive slower than my husband. Therefore, I could relax, listen to the kids sing, and enjoy the ride.
And I did enjoy the concept of riding the bus all the way until I actually boarded in Costa Mesa. I don’t know if it was the diesel fumes or the lack of air-conditioning or the sight of South Coast Plaza receding in the distance, but suddenly I wondered if this was really going to be the MGM musical experience I signed on for.
The bus driver did drive slower than my husband—about seventy miles per hour slower. That’s because she forgot her transponder. Trapped in the #2 lane on the 91. It seemed like a good time to break into song. Instead the jumping bean—I mean boy-- in front of me managed to ram my right knee twice. I wanted to cry, but we were in the Inland Empire now. Time to be tough.
We arrived after dark. Luckily my cabin had electricity, heat, and running water. It also had seven girls I was supposed to keep in order: three altos, four sopranos. What perfect timing for “Whistle While You Work” or a few bars of “The hills are alive with the sound of music.”
But no. Instead, they talked about “hotties.” I had to laugh out loud. For me, “hotties” is a difficult word to pronounce with a straight face. I think my guffaw might have offended my charges. They turned on me. “So what do you call a hot guy?”
I went back thirty years. “When I was your age, we called them foxes.”
They howled in disbelief. “You mean, like the animal?” I guess, in retrospect, it does sound sort of ridiculous. But no dumber than “hottie.”
Now that we had laughed at each other, we were sufficiently bonded. Maybe we could sing. It’d be like the sisters in “Fiddler on the Roof.” But no, they wanted to tell scary stories, worry about non-existent bears, and reminisce about preschooler cartoons. So that’s what we did.
The next morning we assembled in the cafeteria. There were other retreat groups there also, all adults. They were probably expecting quiet time to reflect over their scrambled eggs. Although we only took up about a third of the room, we made up for it in energy.
Ok, the kids were a little boisterous, kind of loud, slightly obnoxious in the way that only teenagers can be. We were getting looks from the other side of the room. They weren’t super friendly. They were probably praying, “Please God. Make them go home before lunch.” That was a good thing since this was a Christian Camp and prayer was encouraged.
The kitchen lady came out and asked for a volunteer to say the blessing. Our leader, Miss Lori, stood up and simply said, “We would like to sing our thanks.”
I didn’t know anything about this. Kids stood up all around me, nonchalant. No choir robes, no sheet music. Just rumpled teens in baseball hats and baggy sweats, some holding coffee, some leaning against their tables. They didn’t bother to move to the front of the room. They just opened their mouths.
And let the music pour out.
Heads jerked around. Eyes widened. Jaws dropped open. By some trick of sound, this rag-tag bunch had instantly transformed into angels singing in Latin from on high. Those folks on the other side of the room, who were only expecting a quick “amen,” were stunned.
There I was, sitting right in the middle of all this unexpected glorious music, magically part of it. It was truly a blessing. Then it was over and the teens were bolting for the bacon.
It’s great living in a musical. I can’t wait for “White Christmas.”
Dumb Things Not To Do
File this one under “Dumb Things Not to Do.”
As a teacher, I planned my pregnancies around the school calendar. I aimed for a June baby each time and ended up with three kids with birthdays only days apart.
You probably are thinking I’m a little schizo in the scheduling department and someone should take away my DayTimer. I just wish you had said something ten years ago before I sealed my doom.
That’s how I became the unintended Queen of the Girly Birthday Parties. What can I say? When you do something all the time, you get good at it. I’ve hit every theme: Cinderella, dolphin, archeology, princess complete with handsome prince (daddy), makeover, dance, even several “make your own” parties—root beer, chocolates, pretzels, etc.
This year I put my foot down.
No parties. Just something small, quiet, with maybe a friend or two. Everything would be simple, uncomplicated, like a return to yesteryear. What I should have said was cheap.
Not everyone in the house was on board with the return to simplicity concept. Luckily, those who rejected the minimalist approach were too young to vote in the family forum.
But it was hard to hold the line against the constant badgering.
My middle child brought me the Pottery Barn Kids catalog with the backyard birthdays circled in washable Crayola markers. She begged for a carnival just like in the photos. It wouldn’t be a party, she promised solemnly, more like a really great playdate.
I added up the costs of the looks-like-homemade-if-your-kids-were-mini-Martha-Stewarts banners and games. I choked at five hundred bucks and I hadn’t even got to the bean-bag toss. I believe I suggested that if she has her heart set on a carnival, she would be better off joining a circus.
My oldest listened, learned, and then took the more stealthy approach. She asked for dinner at a restaurant where you cook over little fondue pots right at your table. Except for visions of third degree burns, I couldn’t see a downside. I encouraged her to invite two friends.
I made the reservation. The lady asked if I wanted balloons at the table.
Why not? The kid wasn’t getting a real party so let’s make things festive. For a few bucks more, they’d throw in a couple of roses and a commemorative photo. What the heck. She only turns thirteen once.
The dinner was a great success for those who enjoy incinerating bite-size chunks of veggies, bread, and meat in boiling vats of spiced oil. The thirteen year olds used the little digital clocks on their cell phones to monitor the cooking times. At least I wouldn’t be worrying about E. coli.
Frankly, it wouldn’t be my first choice in restaurants. The thrill of cooking my own dinner wore off long, long ago. I admit I perked up at the chocolate dipping part. But the birthday girl was happy and I was grateful not to do dishes. All was good.
Then the bill arrived. My husband got this stricken look on his face. For a minute I was afraid we would be doing dishes. “How much?” I asked.
$350.
For that much, she could have had a party and rented Shakira AND Rhianna. Well, I wouldn’t make that mistake again. Quiet celebration #2 for my youngest daughter was up next.
She wanted to go to the American Girl store and buy a doll that looked like her. The doll was $100 so I figured she was set for celebration and gift. Plus, the store had a café. We could have lunch. What could possibly go wrong?
My daughter talked endlessly about the doll. Even I got excited. We scoured the American Girl website. They had a doll hair salon! And a photo studio! It would be so much fun!
It would be so much money.
Don’t ever believe a little girl who says she wants a doll. It’s a lie. She doesn’t want a doll. She wants the doll and every outfit, accessory, and companion in the collection. Let me tell you--at American Girl that is gonna set you back.
The employee who changed the new doll’s hairstyle from one ponytail to two ponytails (for $20 and an hour’s wait) confided the average customer spends $1100.
Did that include lunch? I relaxed when the kids ordered buttered noodles until I noticed my husband’s stricken face. $250.
My middle child looked crafty. “On my birthday, I’ll skip a meal if I can have a carnival.” I did the math.
“Deal.”
As a teacher, I planned my pregnancies around the school calendar. I aimed for a June baby each time and ended up with three kids with birthdays only days apart.
You probably are thinking I’m a little schizo in the scheduling department and someone should take away my DayTimer. I just wish you had said something ten years ago before I sealed my doom.
That’s how I became the unintended Queen of the Girly Birthday Parties. What can I say? When you do something all the time, you get good at it. I’ve hit every theme: Cinderella, dolphin, archeology, princess complete with handsome prince (daddy), makeover, dance, even several “make your own” parties—root beer, chocolates, pretzels, etc.
This year I put my foot down.
No parties. Just something small, quiet, with maybe a friend or two. Everything would be simple, uncomplicated, like a return to yesteryear. What I should have said was cheap.
Not everyone in the house was on board with the return to simplicity concept. Luckily, those who rejected the minimalist approach were too young to vote in the family forum.
But it was hard to hold the line against the constant badgering.
My middle child brought me the Pottery Barn Kids catalog with the backyard birthdays circled in washable Crayola markers. She begged for a carnival just like in the photos. It wouldn’t be a party, she promised solemnly, more like a really great playdate.
I added up the costs of the looks-like-homemade-if-your-kids-were-mini-Martha-Stewarts banners and games. I choked at five hundred bucks and I hadn’t even got to the bean-bag toss. I believe I suggested that if she has her heart set on a carnival, she would be better off joining a circus.
My oldest listened, learned, and then took the more stealthy approach. She asked for dinner at a restaurant where you cook over little fondue pots right at your table. Except for visions of third degree burns, I couldn’t see a downside. I encouraged her to invite two friends.
I made the reservation. The lady asked if I wanted balloons at the table.
Why not? The kid wasn’t getting a real party so let’s make things festive. For a few bucks more, they’d throw in a couple of roses and a commemorative photo. What the heck. She only turns thirteen once.
The dinner was a great success for those who enjoy incinerating bite-size chunks of veggies, bread, and meat in boiling vats of spiced oil. The thirteen year olds used the little digital clocks on their cell phones to monitor the cooking times. At least I wouldn’t be worrying about E. coli.
Frankly, it wouldn’t be my first choice in restaurants. The thrill of cooking my own dinner wore off long, long ago. I admit I perked up at the chocolate dipping part. But the birthday girl was happy and I was grateful not to do dishes. All was good.
Then the bill arrived. My husband got this stricken look on his face. For a minute I was afraid we would be doing dishes. “How much?” I asked.
$350.
For that much, she could have had a party and rented Shakira AND Rhianna. Well, I wouldn’t make that mistake again. Quiet celebration #2 for my youngest daughter was up next.
She wanted to go to the American Girl store and buy a doll that looked like her. The doll was $100 so I figured she was set for celebration and gift. Plus, the store had a café. We could have lunch. What could possibly go wrong?
My daughter talked endlessly about the doll. Even I got excited. We scoured the American Girl website. They had a doll hair salon! And a photo studio! It would be so much fun!
It would be so much money.
Don’t ever believe a little girl who says she wants a doll. It’s a lie. She doesn’t want a doll. She wants the doll and every outfit, accessory, and companion in the collection. Let me tell you--at American Girl that is gonna set you back.
The employee who changed the new doll’s hairstyle from one ponytail to two ponytails (for $20 and an hour’s wait) confided the average customer spends $1100.
Did that include lunch? I relaxed when the kids ordered buttered noodles until I noticed my husband’s stricken face. $250.
My middle child looked crafty. “On my birthday, I’ll skip a meal if I can have a carnival.” I did the math.
“Deal.”
It Ain't Easy Being Green
Even Shrek would admit it ain’t easy being green. The eco-friendly bandwagon has arrived in town and I am holding on by my fingernails. I sure miss the good ol’ days of conspicuous consumption.
I’ve tried to show my support for the cause by turning down any flight in a private jet, refusing to wear bowling ball sized diamonds mined in Africa, and dumping any friend who lives in a house larger than 50,000 square feet.
But they just want more, more, more.
It’s so hard to change. Just today I was vacuuming with an upright model old enough to vote. I hate that thing. It’s bumper guards have sprung loose and whip around frantically sideswiping every piece of furniture and ankle in its demon path.
Today it wouldn’t pick up a single hair, piece of lint, or small child. I was ecstatic.
I get a new vacuum! I want a red one! I’m gonna buy it tomorrow!
Then I started thinking about landfills, and carbon footprints, and Visa bills and decided the environmentally sound thing to do would be the check and see if the belt was shot.
I tried to flip it over, but I couldn’t lift it. I called for reinforcements. Two out of three Payne children showed up. I explained how—on the count of three—we were going to turn the beast over and DROP it to dislodge any Webkins, Nintendos, or winning lottery tickets.
Nothing fell out, except maybe a few dust bunnies. The open window blew them right back under the bed where they knew they’d be safe. After all, when you are environmentally sensitive like me that means no animals—real or dust--would be harmed in the cleaning of this house.
So back to the bloody vacuum. We dropped the bugger a few more times for good measure. If it wasn’t broken already, it would be now. And then I’d get a red one.
This is the point where I remembered vacuum cleaners use bags. Fairly quickly actually, a second thought banged into the first one. When did I last change it? Probably the last time I balanced my checkbook.
1992.
But where were the replacement vacuum bags? They were probably in some box marked “cleaning supplies” left over from the move. Eleven years ago. I won’t bore you with the search-and-rescue details, but I finally found them lodged in the Christmas decorations, cradling baby Jesus.
I didn’t mean those bad words, baby Jesus.
I cracked open the plastic housing on the canister very slowly. Who knows what could be living in my vacuum? Prairie dogs? A subcontractor left over from the remodel? Fleas?
Everything appeared to be dead, I thought in relief. The old bag was so heavy it could double as a cement shoe for a one-legged mobster. I handled it gingerly, like I imagine the bomb squad might do, and I fleetingly thought of calling them.
It says on the Internet that you can get very sick from vacuum cleaner dust.
I wasn’t taking any chances. The seams were already straining, a big clump of toxic debris hung out the open mouth like a furry tongue. It was disgusting. So I made my kid take it out to the trash.
There are some perks to being the boss.
Unfortunately, not only had the bag filled to capacity, it had overflowed and was crud was lodged down that entire tube that goes to the floor. It was layers of rock sediment hardened over geologic time.
I started pulling out hockey pucks of lint with my fingers until I could no longer reach. Then I grabbed an old toothbrush and fished some more out. My 13-year-old walked in and said, “That better not be mine” and walked out.
Whatever happened to “Mom, need some help?”
I got out everything I could before resorting to kitchen utensils. Then I had the bright idea to just turn on the vacuum naked and bag-less. I could watch to make sure any obstruction cleared itself out.
I knelt down to watch the lint dribble out.
A word of caution in case you want to try this at home. Lint under pressure does not dribble. Picture more a potato shooter and you will get the idea.
Anyway, I’m glad my reflexes are still so… uh…reflexive because I really need to keep my vision in my left eye. And as for the dent in the wall eight feet away? I’m sure I can find a subcontractor somewhere around her to patch it up.
And my vacuum? Good as new. See, it pays to be green.
I’ve tried to show my support for the cause by turning down any flight in a private jet, refusing to wear bowling ball sized diamonds mined in Africa, and dumping any friend who lives in a house larger than 50,000 square feet.
But they just want more, more, more.
It’s so hard to change. Just today I was vacuuming with an upright model old enough to vote. I hate that thing. It’s bumper guards have sprung loose and whip around frantically sideswiping every piece of furniture and ankle in its demon path.
Today it wouldn’t pick up a single hair, piece of lint, or small child. I was ecstatic.
I get a new vacuum! I want a red one! I’m gonna buy it tomorrow!
Then I started thinking about landfills, and carbon footprints, and Visa bills and decided the environmentally sound thing to do would be the check and see if the belt was shot.
I tried to flip it over, but I couldn’t lift it. I called for reinforcements. Two out of three Payne children showed up. I explained how—on the count of three—we were going to turn the beast over and DROP it to dislodge any Webkins, Nintendos, or winning lottery tickets.
Nothing fell out, except maybe a few dust bunnies. The open window blew them right back under the bed where they knew they’d be safe. After all, when you are environmentally sensitive like me that means no animals—real or dust--would be harmed in the cleaning of this house.
So back to the bloody vacuum. We dropped the bugger a few more times for good measure. If it wasn’t broken already, it would be now. And then I’d get a red one.
This is the point where I remembered vacuum cleaners use bags. Fairly quickly actually, a second thought banged into the first one. When did I last change it? Probably the last time I balanced my checkbook.
1992.
But where were the replacement vacuum bags? They were probably in some box marked “cleaning supplies” left over from the move. Eleven years ago. I won’t bore you with the search-and-rescue details, but I finally found them lodged in the Christmas decorations, cradling baby Jesus.
I didn’t mean those bad words, baby Jesus.
I cracked open the plastic housing on the canister very slowly. Who knows what could be living in my vacuum? Prairie dogs? A subcontractor left over from the remodel? Fleas?
Everything appeared to be dead, I thought in relief. The old bag was so heavy it could double as a cement shoe for a one-legged mobster. I handled it gingerly, like I imagine the bomb squad might do, and I fleetingly thought of calling them.
It says on the Internet that you can get very sick from vacuum cleaner dust.
I wasn’t taking any chances. The seams were already straining, a big clump of toxic debris hung out the open mouth like a furry tongue. It was disgusting. So I made my kid take it out to the trash.
There are some perks to being the boss.
Unfortunately, not only had the bag filled to capacity, it had overflowed and was crud was lodged down that entire tube that goes to the floor. It was layers of rock sediment hardened over geologic time.
I started pulling out hockey pucks of lint with my fingers until I could no longer reach. Then I grabbed an old toothbrush and fished some more out. My 13-year-old walked in and said, “That better not be mine” and walked out.
Whatever happened to “Mom, need some help?”
I got out everything I could before resorting to kitchen utensils. Then I had the bright idea to just turn on the vacuum naked and bag-less. I could watch to make sure any obstruction cleared itself out.
I knelt down to watch the lint dribble out.
A word of caution in case you want to try this at home. Lint under pressure does not dribble. Picture more a potato shooter and you will get the idea.
Anyway, I’m glad my reflexes are still so… uh…reflexive because I really need to keep my vision in my left eye. And as for the dent in the wall eight feet away? I’m sure I can find a subcontractor somewhere around her to patch it up.
And my vacuum? Good as new. See, it pays to be green.
A Lifetime of Flying Coach
Elementary school is designed to prepare students for middle school. Middle school is designed to prepare students for high school. High school is…ok, you get the picture.
But after Back-to-School night at the middle school, I am sure only of one thing. Middle school prepares kids for a lifetime of flying Coach.
Who knows? That skill could be handier than a college degree.
In case you haven’t stepped foot in a public school recently, these are the two rules for Back-to-School night:
Rule #1 is only parents are invited. I assume this is because teachers see enough of our kids and are sick of them. Of course, anyone who spends eight hours a day with 6th,7th, and 8th graders and isn’t sick of them by 3:30 p.m. might want to have a little chat with the school psychologist.
So while we parents try to stay awake as their teachers drone on about how homework counts for 20% of the quarter grade, our children are relaxing at home. While I try to not to herniate a disc in chair that is welded to a desk, my kids are bleeding the color ink cartridges dry, draining the batteries on the cell phone, and decimating any snack in the pantry that has “Trans fat” listed in the top three ingredients.
Meanwhile, my husband is pleased because to him this adults only event qualifies as a “date night” in his book, so now he is off the hook. And he didn’t even have to talk about our relationship.
The second rule of Back-to-School-Night is like something out of Fear Factor: LAX. You must follow a micro version of your child’s class schedule. It’s sort of like a mad dash from your car to the gate because your flight is leaving in five minutes. Now imagine your kid navigating the same route carrying a forty-pound backpack and dragging a cello.
Life Lesson: nobody in middle school holds the plane for you. Get used to it.
So you see, there are a lot of parallels to modern day air travel. Some comparisons are obvious—good luck trying to find a parking place, and no there is no cell phone lot—but other eerie similarities aren’t so apparent.
For example, did you hear about the young woman who was recently blocked from her Southwest flight because her skirt was deemed a bit too short? There isn’t an eighth grade girl out there who isn’t rolling her eyes in sympathy.
Every middle school female worth her Maybelline extra-length mascara can tell you that skirt needs to hang at least to her fingertips. She might get bumped for not turning off her cell phone, but never, never, never for a dress code infraction.
I passed the principal in the quad. She was smiling and greeting parents. My first instinct was to avoid eye contact. I don’t want to get hauled in for secondary inspection or a PTA position. I just want to find the next classroom before the seats are all filled.
Finally, I find Computer Graphics. It was located in the educational equivalent of the “Z” terminal. I was holding a beverage that I hoped was jacked with caffeine. After I sat down, I remembered the 3-1-1 rule. Or was it the 9-1-1 rule? Anyway, I’m sure my liquid had to be banned in this room.
What to do? How embarrassing if it were confiscated. And I’d heard stories about this teacher. He might make me army crawl it to the trash can while he played the theme to “Mission Impossible.” I ended up sneaking it into my carry-on, I mean purse, when he hit the lights.
At least P.E. met in the auditorium. We sat in Row 32 E &F deliberately. Less risk of being seen and closer to the lavatory. I needed it after gulping the entire soda from a straw sticking out of my handbag.
My daughter has been complaining about the size of her P.E. locker, which is about the size of a shoebox. All I can tell her is welcome to the world of carry-on.
If she doesn’t learn now how to cram as much stuff as possible into a tiny suitcase that is--in theory--supposed to fit into an overhead bin, but won’t because the bin is already full of someone else’s overfilled carry-on, when will she?
For most of us, life is living with a garment bag stuffed under the seat in front of us. Life is sitting behind the guy who always has to recline fully.
As much as we deserve First Class, most of life is Coach.
But after Back-to-School night at the middle school, I am sure only of one thing. Middle school prepares kids for a lifetime of flying Coach.
Who knows? That skill could be handier than a college degree.
In case you haven’t stepped foot in a public school recently, these are the two rules for Back-to-School night:
Rule #1 is only parents are invited. I assume this is because teachers see enough of our kids and are sick of them. Of course, anyone who spends eight hours a day with 6th,7th, and 8th graders and isn’t sick of them by 3:30 p.m. might want to have a little chat with the school psychologist.
So while we parents try to stay awake as their teachers drone on about how homework counts for 20% of the quarter grade, our children are relaxing at home. While I try to not to herniate a disc in chair that is welded to a desk, my kids are bleeding the color ink cartridges dry, draining the batteries on the cell phone, and decimating any snack in the pantry that has “Trans fat” listed in the top three ingredients.
Meanwhile, my husband is pleased because to him this adults only event qualifies as a “date night” in his book, so now he is off the hook. And he didn’t even have to talk about our relationship.
The second rule of Back-to-School-Night is like something out of Fear Factor: LAX. You must follow a micro version of your child’s class schedule. It’s sort of like a mad dash from your car to the gate because your flight is leaving in five minutes. Now imagine your kid navigating the same route carrying a forty-pound backpack and dragging a cello.
Life Lesson: nobody in middle school holds the plane for you. Get used to it.
So you see, there are a lot of parallels to modern day air travel. Some comparisons are obvious—good luck trying to find a parking place, and no there is no cell phone lot—but other eerie similarities aren’t so apparent.
For example, did you hear about the young woman who was recently blocked from her Southwest flight because her skirt was deemed a bit too short? There isn’t an eighth grade girl out there who isn’t rolling her eyes in sympathy.
Every middle school female worth her Maybelline extra-length mascara can tell you that skirt needs to hang at least to her fingertips. She might get bumped for not turning off her cell phone, but never, never, never for a dress code infraction.
I passed the principal in the quad. She was smiling and greeting parents. My first instinct was to avoid eye contact. I don’t want to get hauled in for secondary inspection or a PTA position. I just want to find the next classroom before the seats are all filled.
Finally, I find Computer Graphics. It was located in the educational equivalent of the “Z” terminal. I was holding a beverage that I hoped was jacked with caffeine. After I sat down, I remembered the 3-1-1 rule. Or was it the 9-1-1 rule? Anyway, I’m sure my liquid had to be banned in this room.
What to do? How embarrassing if it were confiscated. And I’d heard stories about this teacher. He might make me army crawl it to the trash can while he played the theme to “Mission Impossible.” I ended up sneaking it into my carry-on, I mean purse, when he hit the lights.
At least P.E. met in the auditorium. We sat in Row 32 E &F deliberately. Less risk of being seen and closer to the lavatory. I needed it after gulping the entire soda from a straw sticking out of my handbag.
My daughter has been complaining about the size of her P.E. locker, which is about the size of a shoebox. All I can tell her is welcome to the world of carry-on.
If she doesn’t learn now how to cram as much stuff as possible into a tiny suitcase that is--in theory--supposed to fit into an overhead bin, but won’t because the bin is already full of someone else’s overfilled carry-on, when will she?
For most of us, life is living with a garment bag stuffed under the seat in front of us. Life is sitting behind the guy who always has to recline fully.
As much as we deserve First Class, most of life is Coach.
Old News Never Changes
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you'd better sit down. The Simple Life starring Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie has been canceled.
In case you have been living under a rock or are one of those intellectual types who can't be bothered, The Simple Life is a quasi-reality show where two Hollywood rich girls descend on real America. Presumably comic mayhem ensues.
In light of recent news events--entertainment news, that is— the old "fish out of water" premise just wasn't playing in Peoria anymore. Maybe the producers could simply change the title to Twenty-to-Life and keep on filming.
It was only a suggestion.
So it is shaping up to be The Summer of Screwed-Up Celebs. Who would have guessed? If there weren't small children involved and impressionable youth watching, the whole crash-and-burn spectacle would be highly entertaining in a high school sort of way. Which is ok by me.
And I, a person who could never manage to weasel out of traffic school even five minutes early, cheered the loudest when Paris got her butt thrown unceremoniously back into jail. Fair is fair, no matter how bad she needed that mani-pedi.
Thank God and the American justice system that not every judge is swayed by an exclusive guest spot on The View nor blinded by the flashing strobes of the paparazzi.
When we get our fill of Paris and Nicole and their various DUIs, addictions, and boy toys, there is always Britney and Lindsay to take up the slack. Add those two to the party mix and things get more explosive than a suicide bomber. Unbelievably, Britney is the only one who hasn’t yet been arrested if you don’t count calling in Child Protective Services.
My prediction is the girl is closer to the clinker than a stripper to a pole. Last week the tabloids plastered photos of her lewd conduct with a civilian into a hotel Jacuzzi. Then there was a dent-and-run in a drugstore parking lot, vomiting on designer dresses at a photo shoot, and we haven't even got to the hair fiasco.
Britney, next time things go bad, do your worst to a quart of Ben & Jerry’s. Trust me on this. You won’t need a wig to cover up the lapse. You may need a muumuu, but you won’t need a wig. There ought to be a law against bad hair extensions.
You know things have gone seriously downhill when Kevin Federline starts looking like the poster boy for Reader’s Digest.
Lindsay, however, did get her close up. It was called a mug shot. I'm not sure what the actual charges were, but she was chasing her assistant's mother in an SUV. Illegal drugs were confiscated from her pants pocket. She says--through her publicist I'm sure--that the drugs belonged to someone else and she was just holding them. It was a favor.
Yeah, right.
If that were really the case, she should be locked up for being terminally stupid. Everyone knows you aren't supposed to hold other people's suspicious items. Hasn't Lindsay ever been in an airport? Geez, it's on the announcements every three minutes.
The other story was she was wearing someone else’s pants. That one is slightly more believable since I’ve seen photos of Britney and Paris swapping fishnets. And Britney will wear anyone’s clothes, or Not wear anyone’s clothes, depending on the proximity of a digital camera.
So in theory, Lindsay could have been wearing anyone’s pants the night she was arrested for stalking her assistant’s mom. Yes, I said ANYONE.
I believe now is a good time to categorically deny that those weren’t my jeans.
First of all, Lindsay might do illegal drugs, play with sharp knives, drive under the influence, and make bad movies. But she would never, never, never be caught dead in “mom jeans.”
My jeans do not require a Brazilian bikini wax to wear them. They are not plastered to my leg from hip to heel. They cover everything I want covered, even when I am sitting. They do not cost several hundred dollars. Perfectly good jeans as far as I am concerned.
Lindsay would be horrified.
One other thing proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the jeans aren’t mine.
Although we both wear jeans sized in the double-digits, hers are “00” and mine…umm…aren’t. The girl might be hallucinating, but she’s not confused.
So there you have it, a summer round-up of sizzling trouble. I can’t wait for autumn.
In case you have been living under a rock or are one of those intellectual types who can't be bothered, The Simple Life is a quasi-reality show where two Hollywood rich girls descend on real America. Presumably comic mayhem ensues.
In light of recent news events--entertainment news, that is— the old "fish out of water" premise just wasn't playing in Peoria anymore. Maybe the producers could simply change the title to Twenty-to-Life and keep on filming.
It was only a suggestion.
So it is shaping up to be The Summer of Screwed-Up Celebs. Who would have guessed? If there weren't small children involved and impressionable youth watching, the whole crash-and-burn spectacle would be highly entertaining in a high school sort of way. Which is ok by me.
And I, a person who could never manage to weasel out of traffic school even five minutes early, cheered the loudest when Paris got her butt thrown unceremoniously back into jail. Fair is fair, no matter how bad she needed that mani-pedi.
Thank God and the American justice system that not every judge is swayed by an exclusive guest spot on The View nor blinded by the flashing strobes of the paparazzi.
When we get our fill of Paris and Nicole and their various DUIs, addictions, and boy toys, there is always Britney and Lindsay to take up the slack. Add those two to the party mix and things get more explosive than a suicide bomber. Unbelievably, Britney is the only one who hasn’t yet been arrested if you don’t count calling in Child Protective Services.
My prediction is the girl is closer to the clinker than a stripper to a pole. Last week the tabloids plastered photos of her lewd conduct with a civilian into a hotel Jacuzzi. Then there was a dent-and-run in a drugstore parking lot, vomiting on designer dresses at a photo shoot, and we haven't even got to the hair fiasco.
Britney, next time things go bad, do your worst to a quart of Ben & Jerry’s. Trust me on this. You won’t need a wig to cover up the lapse. You may need a muumuu, but you won’t need a wig. There ought to be a law against bad hair extensions.
You know things have gone seriously downhill when Kevin Federline starts looking like the poster boy for Reader’s Digest.
Lindsay, however, did get her close up. It was called a mug shot. I'm not sure what the actual charges were, but she was chasing her assistant's mother in an SUV. Illegal drugs were confiscated from her pants pocket. She says--through her publicist I'm sure--that the drugs belonged to someone else and she was just holding them. It was a favor.
Yeah, right.
If that were really the case, she should be locked up for being terminally stupid. Everyone knows you aren't supposed to hold other people's suspicious items. Hasn't Lindsay ever been in an airport? Geez, it's on the announcements every three minutes.
The other story was she was wearing someone else’s pants. That one is slightly more believable since I’ve seen photos of Britney and Paris swapping fishnets. And Britney will wear anyone’s clothes, or Not wear anyone’s clothes, depending on the proximity of a digital camera.
So in theory, Lindsay could have been wearing anyone’s pants the night she was arrested for stalking her assistant’s mom. Yes, I said ANYONE.
I believe now is a good time to categorically deny that those weren’t my jeans.
First of all, Lindsay might do illegal drugs, play with sharp knives, drive under the influence, and make bad movies. But she would never, never, never be caught dead in “mom jeans.”
My jeans do not require a Brazilian bikini wax to wear them. They are not plastered to my leg from hip to heel. They cover everything I want covered, even when I am sitting. They do not cost several hundred dollars. Perfectly good jeans as far as I am concerned.
Lindsay would be horrified.
One other thing proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the jeans aren’t mine.
Although we both wear jeans sized in the double-digits, hers are “00” and mine…umm…aren’t. The girl might be hallucinating, but she’s not confused.
So there you have it, a summer round-up of sizzling trouble. I can’t wait for autumn.
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