One to grow on

“Oh, you poor thing,” the Dillards clerk exclaimed as she copied numbers from my driver's license onto the check I’d just written. “Born on Christmas Day! You really got ripped off, huh?”
I glanced up from my checkbook, where I’d been trying to remember what I did with check #2642. Already that morning I had battled my way through Stein Mart’s customer service line to exchange a sweater, and I still had Toys R Us looming before me. For expediency’s sake, I stood ready to agree with her.
I couldn’t do it, though. Whenever anyone finds out I was born on Dec. 25, they always react with sympathy and attempt to comfort me about my bad luck. It makes as much sense as when grandmotherly strangers try to console me for having three boys and no girls, as if I could have -- or would have -- done anything about it.
The truth is, though, that I hadn’t thought much about my birthday falling on the biggest holiday of the year. Maybe it bothered me a bit when I was a kid. We were never in school on my birthday, so I didn’t get to see Mrs. Turner draw a birthday cake with my name on it in colored chalk on the blackboard. Since second grade, however, I’ve gotten over it.
A Christmas birthday does lend itself to interesting variations of the usual holiday practices. As a child, I left Santa a piece of my birthday cake instead of milk and cookies. And contrary to the apparent consensus of many Cool Springs store clerks, no one close to me has ever forgotten my birthday or tried to pass off one gift to cover both celebrations.
Of course, I do have to wait all year if there’s a gift I really would like to ask for, but that’s gotten easier to overcome with each birthday.
In fact, my family members have always gone out of their way to make the day special for me, from their cheery “Happy Birthday!” in response to my “Merry Christmas!” greeting to the specially designated birthday presents wrapped in paper that is any color but red or green.
Remembering those times, I realized right there at the cash register that being born on Christmas Day is anything but a rip-off. I know of no better day to come into the world than when peace and joy reign, when a child’s anticipation is almost unbearable, when people in every nation rejoice to commemorate a birth that changed history.
Sharing a birthday with Jesus Christ is a great blessing to me, and that store clerk inadvertently reminded me why. Christmastime can be hectic and stressful. But it’s also when most of us are intently focused on someone other than ourselves.
Every day, but especially on my birthday, I have the chance to thank God for gifts I’d never want to exchange.

Fake-tree huggers

This is the year we Burgins bought an artificial Christmas tree.
Our last enchanted experience selecting the perfect tree from the Home Depot outside garden center converted us into fake-tree people.
Nothing against The Home Depot, of course. It is what it is. I knew going in that taking my family there to buy our tree would not resemble that commercial where the Budweiser Clydesdales are pulling a sleigh full of smiling models with hatchets snuggling up to a hot beverage during a holiday tree-seeking expedition.
No, our escapade played more like an episode in the Dr. Phil house -- still with the hatchets, though.
Once Henry overcame his initial embarrassment over his dad’s cold-weather getup, he was surprisingly game. Mason, however, had a social studies deadline bearing down on him, Tim kept counting down the minutes until tip-off in the UT/Memphis basketball game, and Owen spent the entire time boycotting the buggy.
Toddlers can be ruthlessly critical shoppers, anyway. If it wasn’t their idea, nothing will please them. Of nearly every tree Tim picked up, Owen said, “Not that one. We don’t need that one. That one’s not good for us.” Never mind that we never asked him. We just needed a tree big enough for our immense collection of ornaments made from kid footprints.
Oh, how far Tim and I have sunk from those kidless days when we’d go out to dinner, then peruse the selection at what my friend Andrea calls World’s Most Expensive Christmas Trees, Santa’s Trees on Moores Lane. You get what you pay for, though. Each of their trees is fluffed out and spaced so you can walk around to evaluate its shape and fullness.
Back then, I thought nothing of plunking down $90 to $100 for something we’d throw out in less than a month.
We’ve always been staunch proponents of the “live” Christmas tree. “You can’t beat the smell!” we’d say. “Picking one out is a tradition.”
Well, scratch that last one. Somehow we forgot we live on the low-ceiling side of Brentwood and came home with a 9-foot tree we had to cram under our 8-foot ceiling like Will Ferrell in Elf.
While our tree tradition has degenerated into a blindfolded dart throw, recent advancements in fake trees are staggering. A Web site called Balsam Hill offers what they call True Needle technology so lifelike, I’ll have to convince my friends it’s fake! Their pre-lit trees are “thoughtfully strung” to guarantee no wires are showing.
Next year I’ll just be thoughtfully strung out.

Have yourself a military Christmas

I put this tiny Nativity scene on Owen's "desk" in the playroom and found it like this today.

I'll bet the wise men didn't expect to see snipers on the roof protecting the newborn baby Jesus. Joseph apparently keeps up with NFL stats as well.

Jesus rocks, too

While listening to a tobyMac song as we drove to his brother's basketball practice, Owen said, "He doesn't sound like he's singing about God."

List-ful thinking

My grandmother turns into a list bully around October.
She lives in the Land Between the Lakes, but she and I call back and forth quite often. Without fail, she springs the question on me each fall.
“So, you got your Christmas list ready?”
Say what?! Christmas? In October, I’m up to my jack-o-lanterns in homemade Halloween costumes. But my grandmother’s been contributing faithfully to her Christmas Club account at the bank, and after ten months of saving, it’s burning a hole in her bank book. She always wants a list from me, my husband and my kids. If I can’t produce, it’s Sears gift cards for us.
Of course, kids just write down anything they could ever want, regardless of how difficult it may be to acquire since, after all, Santa handles those logistics.
However, not everything on a grown-up Christmas list is easy for grandmothers to come by. I would never send her to the Paducah mall for a Bjork CD or ask her to fork over big bucks for my coveted 10-inch Wustof chef’s knife. That’s for husbands to do, not grandmas.
So, not meaning to patronize, I write some, let’s say, less coveted items I wouldn’t mind having, mainly to make my grandmother’s life easier. I tell her I need a new white turtleneck or a UT sweatshirt because mine is all pilled and, yes, I promise that’s all I really want for Christmas. Based on these lists, I’m sure she thinks I am the most boring person on earth.
For Christmas, I try to think of what my relatives enjoy, trust my own taste and hope they agree. I don’t ask for Christmas lists because I think shaking down a family member for a list reduces gift-giving to running errands for them, as in, “I picked up that white turtleneck you said you wanted. Oh, and Merry Christmas!”
Of course, that’s not what Nanaw’s doing. She’s just trying to get something she can be proud to send, something she’s confident we’ll enjoy. If she reads this, I’m confident I’ll get a coal-filled stocking upside the head.
I have been keeping a list of gifts I’ve already received this Christmas, such as my next-door neighbor’s kind attempt to help us light our luminaries with his propane torch. Watching the side of that first bag turning black and the sand melting will be a treasured memory.
The Loveless Café’s mail-order business has been a blessing, as are the Bakers Bridge Avenue shortcut home from the mall and cookie-baking with my boys. I do wish we didn’t end up with so many Cyclops snowman cookies from my little comedian cookie bakers.
Maybe I’ll put that on my list for next year.

Road weary

If you’re reading this on Monday, chances are it’s because you drove the entire state of Alabama and back to visit all the relatives for Thanksgiving.
With the holidays comes the insurmountable quest to visit every family member on the tree so no one’s feelings get hurt. Of course, this is as simple as finding the electric knife when the turkey’s ready.
Still, the urge to achieve family holiday harmony resurfaces annually like It’s a Wonderful Life. We want to please all the grandparents because once you become your own family, you realize how much goes into making the holidays happy.
This stress is why adult children lament that the holidays don’t have the same magic they did when they were little. Well, of course not. Right about the time you get married and get in on the holiday logistical planning, you realize why your mom always got that Thanksgiving headache and your dad’s eyes glazed over during dinner.
That childhood naiveté is part of the holiday magic. Remember when you were in college and your mom still signed your name with theirs on gift cards? In your postgraduate days when you and your siblings got together at your folks’ to eat and play board games into the wee hours on Thanksgiving night, your only care was whether you’re going to play Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit next. That’s grown-up holiday magic.
Now it’s a struggle to feel that magic when you’re trying to cram all the wrapped gifts into the car-top carrier, or when the crowd at the Louisville Cracker Barrel looks like…the crowd at the Franklin Cracker Barrel.
Your disillusionment begins when you have The First Grandchild. Suddenly you are responsible not only for your child’s holiday happiness but for that of your parents as well because you are bringing the most important gift of all: the baby.
Up till now it never occurred to you that your parents might have feelings, that they might not love eating at Waffle House on Christmas morning while you enjoy French toast at your in-laws’ place.
But marriage, divorce, in-laws and exes all claim a piece of your pumpkin pie, so the family tries to devise a system that won’t sacrifice anyone’s sanity.
For years, my family had what we considered the foolproof “home and away” plan. If Thanksgiving was at the three brothers’ parents’ house, it was called “home,” and that Christmas would be at the wives’ parents’ houses, or “away.” The following year, we’d switch.
When we were first married, Labor Day picnic conversations usually started with, “So, are we ‘home’ or ‘away’ for Thanksgiving this year?”
However, all it takes to destroy the system’s delicate balance is for one of the grown kids to opt out by moving across the country or having two or three more babies. If your family is facing this season without a plan, I hope you all won’t be sitting around the fire singing that new holiday classic:
“Over the river and through the woods to the therapist’s couch we go….”

My Life With Stuntmen

As I write this, I'm dodging machine gun fire. My sons are chasing each other with fake guns through my office, which is supposed to be off limits. This being the first day of a weeklong Thanksgiving break, though, means rules are held more loosely, especially when it's RAINING.
My 5-year-old is proud of his newly discovered machine gun sound effect, the one you make with your top teeth against your bottom lip. I cringe each time I hear my wedding china dinging together as the floor under the china cabinet bounces under the footsteps of the invasion. Whichever mom was the first to say, "It sounds like a herd of elephants running through here," really pegged it.
The most flinchworthy aspect of living with three boys is that they can't take a straight path anywhere. Nothing slows them down on their trek through the house, through the yard, the mall, the car. One of my 12-year-olds must have an ongoing wager with himself that he can step on as many pieces of furniture as possible on his way from the den to the kitchen. No matter if it means climbing, jumping, rolling over or under something. He'll take that path. On a recent hike around Radnor Lake, I'd swear he walked twice as far as the rest of us, what with all the shimmying up trees, clambering over rocks and slipping through fences.
To Owen, every surface is for sitting, except chairs. He also thinks his brothers are trampolines, and every commercial break, he pounces on one of them like a puppy.
Boys are the reason for signs that say, "Please stay on the marked trail."
Because it would never occur to them to do that on their own.

At least it's not bills

Pottery Barn’s annual yuletide attack on my mailbox has begun.
I’ve ordered maybe three things from them in my lifetime, but apparently that’s not enough. They want me to want more!
It’s not just Pottery Barn, though. It’s the stepchildren, PB Kids and PB Teen. Plus, Pottery Barn and all its kin are owned by Williams Sonoma, so if you let one of them in, you’re also inviting in the folks from Williams Sonoma, Hold Everything and the ultramodern West Elm home décor catalog. Each week leading up to Christmas, they visit my mailbox and overstay their welcome.
Our recent summery weather didn’t do much to put me in a fall magazine or catalog-shopping mood anyway. Sure, it’s cold now, but Southern Living’s “Celebrate Fall with our Blackberry Cobbler and Apple Dumplings” issue arrived on an 89-degree October day. On the way back from my mailbox last week, I glimpsed velvet curtains on Pottery Barn’s back cover and almost passed out on the steaming driveway.
I brought this catalog assault on myself, of course. I no longer believe the Internet is the work of the devil, and I have indulged in a bit of lazy (I prefer the term “efficient”) online Christmas shopping. Mail order companies now know me as “direct mail bait.”
Lots of companies bombard us with catalogs, but Pottery Barn and Lillian Vernon in particular seem to have it out for American postal carriers. Their catalog onslaught has the desperate air of the stalking high school boyfriend who would call you eight times before you left the house in the morning.
“Hi! It’s Pottery Barn again. Just wanted to be sure you saw our $40 pillar candles that will make your mantle look so elegant for Christmas, but only if you buy at least six of them because you don’t want your holiday mantle to look skimpy, do you? OK, well, see you tomorrow.”
As if I had room in my budget for $240 worth of candles.
I guess the catalog printers will survive the economic downturn, even if my mail carrier doesn't.

It's not nucular science

"Mom, when's it gonna be time for munch?"
I looked down at my 5-year-old, who had run into my office after changing out of his church clothes.
"Do what?!" I said. "What are you talking about, 'munch'?"
He started bucking back and forth. "You know, you said we were gonna eat munch after church today."
"Oh, BRUNCH!" I laughed. I tried holding it in because he is a very serious old man inside a 5-year-old body and he hates getting stuff wrong. I tried to soften the blow.
"'Brunch' is when you combine 'breakfast' and 'lunch.' You know, like a 'spork.'" This explanation served as a jumping off point for names he thought they should have given brunch, such as "lekfast" and "brupper."
I enjoy these episodes because they prove Owen has inherited our family's infamous Granddaddy Disease, wherein he gets words wrong in the most entertaining ways just like my grandfather did. Probably the most enduring example is when my grandfather told us my grandmother was stressed out because she had to get her monogram that day. It took us a few tries to figure out she actually was having a mammogram.
On Fireman Sam the other day, a lady called a little boy a "hooligan." Owen said, "What did she call him?" His attempts to repeat it ranged from "hoogleland" to "hoolan" and kept us giggling and punchy for at least a few minutes.
My older boys had adorable baby words, like the way Henry used "cha-box" for lunchbox and Mason would say "walkamama" when he wanted me to come to him. But by age 5 they were pretty much ready for a spot on Jeopardy. Owen's mix-ups persist.
My favorite came out at age 3 when he threw himself backward on the couch and said, "Help me be a afroback (acrobat)."

Why does it have to be snakes?

I can't leave out the baby, who went as Indiana Jones this year.

Kids' Favorites

Mason's best costume was in 2nd grade when he went as Titans coach Jeff Fisher. I e-mailed it to Jeff Dwyer on News 2, who asked if Mason could come out to Opry Mills and surprise Coach Fisher on his Monday Night Live show. We did, and that's when they got this shot. The gigantic arm in the red and white sleeve next to Mason belongs to Albert Haynesworth.

Henry's best was at age 5 when he wanted to be his favorite NASCAR driver Dale Jr. You can tell in the photo Mason is totally thrilled to be a ghost. For Lil' E, we put a strip of white first-aid tape down the leg of some old dress pants and added some racing stickers to this red windbreaker he already had. Of course, he couldn't go to the church preschool fall festival with a beer logo on his back, so we just shortened it to Bud and said it was his nickname.

Life Before Kids

My favorite Halloween costume EVER! Tim and I went as Guns n' Roses, circa 1992. He's the one in the kilt.

Better Together!

Today I had my first blind date ever!

After weeks of hemming and hawing back and forth via e-mail, I finally met the famous Sista Smiff for lunch. And it was too cool.

We first spoke via the Internets when she e-mailed me about a column I wrote for The Tennessean a long time ago, telling me stuff I never knew about my husband and his brothers since she and her sister grew up in Brentwood. Hers is the only blog I still read from the old, better Nashville Is Talking. She recently found gainful employment in Cool Springs, so we hope to be rip-roaring around town during lunch hour more often.

Y'all go see her now, y'hear?

Code Kablooey

Last night was the first time my 12-year-old twins attended a Titans Monday Night Football game, and we still made them catch the school bus at 6:42 this morning. I'm guessing that the late night is hitting them right about now, as one sits in science and the other in English.

ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz

Are you a peeker?

"I'll say the prayer," five-year-old Owen said as my other two boys and I slid into our chairs at the kitchen table before dinner recently. He makes this announcement at every meal, even though he almost always says grace at our table because he is a very bossy boy and does not delegate unless the task requires carrying something. We always let him say grace because, well, we're hungry and we want to eat.
If my husband is home from work by dinnertime, we hold hands in a circle around the table. This is also how I tell if Henry has washed his hands. If my husband is not home in time, we individually clasp our hands in the prayer position because the circle is not complete without him and because I can't reach Owen from my seat without getting my front in my plate.
"God is great, God is good...," Owen began, and I realized as he was almost finished that I had not closed my eyes but was watching him. Yes, I am a prayer peeker. More often than not, I watch my child as he is praying, but I can't make myself feel guilty about it because there is something divine in a child's face that is exquisitely concentrating on thanking God. I nearly tumbled out of the church balcony one Sunday when I peeked over to see my preschooler saying the Lord's Prayer with the rest of the congregation. I didn't know that his father, who is in charge of bedtime, had taught it to him.
Since then, I compulsively peek during group prayers, usually right at the beginning, and I'm thinking I shouldn't do it because no one else is looking, just me. I know I'm probably breaking the eleventh commandment, but it humbles me to see friends, relatives, elders and young'uns with their own heads bowed in relationship with their Lord.
"...Let us thank Him for our food, amen. MOM!!!!"
Oops, busted!
"Owen, you're not supposed to yell at people after the prayer," Henry said.
"Yeah, but Mom was watching me! I saw her peeking," he rebutted. That's when Mason introduced Mr. Bossypants to his first conundrum.
"The only way you would know Mom was peeking is if you were peeking, too."
Can I get an amen?

So close and yet so far

So this was the view from our backyard every day at the Wainwright House. If you look just above my head, you can see the Manhattan skyline in the distance.

Every now and then something great happens

A week ago I participated in an incredible experience. I spent a week at the Wainwright House in Rye, New York, with 14 other women from around the country (and Saskatchewan, eh!) at the Guideposts Writers Workshop. We all had to submit a story about an experience that changed us and how faith made a difference. The editors at Guideposts choose 15 of us from nearly 5,000 manuscripts, and I was one of the lucky 15. There are two really cool things about this contest. The first is that an alumna of the 1978 workshop is Sue Monk Kidd, a frequent Guideposts contributor and author of the book The Secret Life of Bees. The second is that I was an intern at Guideposts 20 years ago as part of the American Society of Magazine Editors program. We lived in a dorm at NYU and worked at the nation's top magazines. I've posted a photo of me on "graduation day" at the Waldorf Astoria (in my version of "New York" clothes) with my bosses, Rick Hamlin and Mary Ann O'Roark. The other girl who interned with me was Becca Allen, a Yale graduate and the granddaughter of Norman Vincent Peale, founder of Guideposts and author of The Power of Positive Thinking. Becca will always be one of the best people I have ever known. The other photo is me, 20 years and about as many pounds later, with Rick at the workshop last week. He said everybody in the office laughed at his Seinfeld hair in the old photo.

At the Wainwright House we lived dorm-style and shared a circa-1940s bathroom. It actually improved the experience, though, because by living together we got to know each other real quick and trusted each other with our precious manuscripts that we worked on that week.

I can't publish my story here because I'm submitting it for publication in Guideposts next year. But if it makes it past the rigorous eye of Rick Hamlin, I'll send you a copy.

Trash talk

Our town does not have trash pick-up, so everybody has to pay private haulers to carry their trash away. The company we use drives around to the back of our house twice a week and empties our big trash containers by hand into their modified pick-up trucks. It is so awesome that I never have to do that pajama-clad sprint to the end of the driveway because we forgot to take the trash can to the curb on garbage day.
It's so convenient that I almost forget it happens, but sometimes I catch a glimpse of our refuse man as he backs up to the trash cans. Lately, when he gets out of the truck to get our garbage, he's talking on a cell phone, and it just really makes me want to know who he's talking to at 7 in the morning while he's getting everybody's trash. I mean, I know the garbage man has a life, but he is on the phone while he goes next door to my neighbor's yard, too. Yes, I've dashed across the house to peep out the window and check.
So, anybody got any ideas who he's conversing with so intently?

Trip or treat

Costumes? Check. Jack-o-lantern? Check. Candy? Check. Proof of residency?
Huh?
Surely you’ve noticed that trick-or-treating has changed. Kids don’t just throw on their costumes and run up and down the block with their friends anymore.
I’ve noticed a tendency for trick-or-treaters to migrate. They don’t always stay near home but go where they can get the most candy for the least effort.
If you live in a neighborhood with ¼-acre yards or less, such as Forrest Crossing or Fieldstone Farms, you may only recognize half of your trick-or-treaters as neighbors. These areas are prime targets for migrating trick-or-treaters because all Mama has to do is keep the van idling on a corner in your neighborhood while the kids hit house after house.
One reason so many treat-seekers migrate to denser neighborhoods is that, with one-acre yards like in Brenthaven, River Oaks or Redwing Farms, trick-or-treating is just exhausting. Often, there are no sidewalks, so you just tromp through the grass. By the time a 6-year-old has dragged a dinosaur tail through four or five of these yards, he’s ready to be done.
A lack of sidewalks and fewer streetlights in older neighborhoods usually means no curbs or storm drains either, hence the yearly spike in ankle injuries from tripping over culverts or stepping in ditches.
The payoff when crossing bigger yards had better be worth it. Kids who had to walk an acre only to find that no one’s home invented the retaliatory flaming bag of poo. If you won’t be home, be sure to display the universal Halloween symbol for “not home,” which is to turn off anything in the house that emits light, including the microwave clock.
Most homeowners love seeing adorable princesses and tiny action figures on the porch. But there are always a few kids who are too old to trick or treat and old enough to know it. One Halloween I opened the door around 9:30 to see three towering boys wearing wigs and holding pillowcases. I wasn’t sure if I should give them the Snickers or my silver.
If you just don’t want to deal with the door-to-door process, there are alternatives. Children can trick or treat merchants at the mall, which to me should only be a last-minute rainout plan. Kids also can do what’s known as a “trunk or treat,” where a church or other community group gathers in the facility parking lot and lets kids go from car to car seeking treats out of car trunks.
Just keep an eye on your jumper cables.

The retail experience ain't what it used to be

I only shop when I NEED something. Recently I've asked to try on shoes at major department stores only to have them tell me my feet aren't petite enough. No, just kidding. On two separate occasions, when the sales clerks brought out the shoes, they were obviously worn. I'm talking creases on the upper and visible debris stuck in the soles! Too tacky. Don't they check this stuff? At Kroger I bought a Lean Cuisine Sesame Chicken entree that had one chicken bite in it instead of the usual five. The worst, though, is when I bought a coffeemaker at Best Buy, brought it home and found dried coffee in the bottom of the carafe. When I told the girl in charge of returns, she expressed immediate concern and dismay and was like, "OK."

I'd bet $50 it got restocked later that day.

I will always compliment good service, often in writing. And if something's not up to par, even snack foods without the requisite amount of cream filling, I will let the appropriate people know about it.

Midlife crisis, part deux

After dropping our sons off at cotillion Saturday, which is another story in itself, my friend Shelley and I decided to shop at Green Hills mall in the meantime. We were ambling through Dillards, minding our own business, when this old saleslady called us out and said, "OK, all this from here all the way over to that wall is 'petites.' 'Misses' is around the corner, if that's what you're looking for."

Now, I would not be classified as "petite" by anyone's standards. But we certainly didn't look like we were about to try out for "Biggest Loser: Friends Edition." I also didn't want to engage in any more unsolicited conversation with this woman, so at the time I just did the whole, "OK, thank you. Thank you very much," routine and kept walking.

As we made our way through handbags toward the perfume section, though, I said, "I think that heifer just kicked us out of the petite department." Our outrage grew. "We were just walking through! What if I were buying something for my petite friend? Yeah! How does she know what we were doing? I can look in any department I want!"

Needless to say, we didn't stop at Christie Cookie after that.

The dame can't help it

Just as my oldest sons are entering their awkward phase, I've hit an unexpected awkward stage in my life in which I feel self-conscious when I hear myself using the word "girl" to describe my friends. It just doesn't sound right to say, "This girl at Bible study said the funniest thing today," to my husband and then turn to my 12-year-old and ask, "Who was that girl you were talking to after football today?'
I mean, we're all around age 40, and I can't use the same word to describe my friends and my kids' friends, can I? I need a new word for everyday use, I guess, but I can't use "lady" for obvious reasons and I don't like "gal" because I hate how it sounds. "Girl" has been perfect for so long, and everything else is either too formal (woman, female, milady) or too loose (chick, babe, broad, etc.) I may have to make up my own word, unless you have suggestions...

In preparation for the Lord's Day

At our house, we save our most ungodly behavior for Sundays. We don’t do it on purpose, of course, because we begin the Sabbath as we do every day, with noble intentions.
But by the time we’ve coaxed every child out of bed, convinced them to wear “nice” clothes, sent two out of three back inside for Bibles and argued about the best way to drive the six miles to church, we’re all behaving like we’re traveling first class on the Hell Express.
Maybe you’ve committed some of the Seven Sunday Sins.
Pride: In my unenlightened high school days, I viewed the communion walk as a convenient fashion runway upon which people paraded so I could covertly rate their outfits. Now that I shop for my kids more than myself, I’m like Ma Walton with the one faded Sunday dress. And I’m not all thankful that I have it, either.
Greed: I’m stingiest with my time, which is especially evident when I’m so busy rushing to get to Mrs. Winners before the drive-thru line gets long that I blow right past the new joiners without even saying how-do.
Envy: Please. I’ve envied the Kennedy-coiffed couples who pull up to the sanctuary with their big black sunglasses and the spit-shined Lexuses. I’ve envied the folks who know all the words to the hymns and sing in tune. The list is everlasting.
Anger: Driving on Sunday morning at Concord and Franklin roads, hereafter known as the Saints Highway, summons up the Pharisee in all of us since there are three churches battling for the right of way. Now they've added two traffic lights to help Brentwood Baptist and Fellowhip Bible folks get out of my way. And yes, you are the bigger heathen if you honk at the guy who cuts you off in the church parking lot.
A friend confessed that she tuned out most of one Sunday’s sermon because she was angry that she was forced to stare at the bare back of the teenage girl in front of her through the entire service. Guess that teenager’s mom forgot that the 11th commandment forbids backless dresses at church.
Lust: See above.
Gluttony: Only you and the Lord keep track of how many free cups of church coffee you take. But those of us who homestead the good seats on the aisle are little Sunday morning piggies, too. One time our church lot was so full I parked in guest parking. I had three kids with me, so I rationalized that God would rather I park in guest parking than skip church altogether.
Sloth: Sleeping in? Check. Sunday morning golf game? That counts. Mouthing the words to the processional hymn? Check. Forgoing Sunday school for Starbucks? Hmmm.
At least I don’t make change in the collection plate.

Not as creepy as it looks

Not many people know I’m on the cemetery committee of the Brentwood Historic Commission. I saw an article in the paper about this group and how they were on a mission to document with GPS the location of all the remaining family cemeteries in Brentwood before developers turn all the old farms into subdivisions.
I don’t know why it sounded like fun to me, but I knew instantly I wanted to help do this. I had never even seen an old family cemetery besides the ones you can spot from the road, and I had no idea there were so many in this town.
If you think about it, in the 1800s and early 1900s, where else would country folks bury their relatives but on family land? This was definitely the country, and parts of it still are. But with all the residential and commercial growth in Williamson County over the past 20 years, making a permanent digital record of these plots has become urgent.
In our old neighborhood, there was a historic cemetery in another home’s side yard. As a newlywed, this used to freak me out. Since a few of my grandparents have passed away over the past several years, though, I guess I have grown to value the idea of the final resting place even more.
It’s fascinating to see a 150-year-old cemetery with eight or nine members of the same family buried together under a massive oak tree out in the middle of the woods. Some of these have been fenced by builders and cared for by descendants, while others are buried under shrubbery, used by the homeowners as a place to toss yard trimmings or store firewood.

The fun part of the job is the hunt for a cemetery we’ve heard about but not plotted yet. A man who lives in Southern Woods, one of the largest neighborhoods on the Williamson/Davidson county line, took us on a hike through a wooded area on his property, which is on one of the main roads. After about five minutes on a “trail,” he said, “Oh, here it is,” and we came upon several tall headstones standing among the trees. In the filtered sun, it was beautiful. All I could do for a minute was wonder how the family got to that hilltop spot with a coffin in a horse-drawn wagon. I considered the difficult job of carrying the heavy stone markers up the ridge and felt pretty lazy in comparison to that generation.
I’ve also learned a ton about history and geology and religion: how granite is better for headstones because it’s an igneous rock that won’t let in water. Of course, it wasn’t available in this area back then, so most of this area’s limestone and marble tombstones are breaking down. How much of the stone in this area was from Louisville, St. Louis and Cincinnati because it was easier to float the stone down river than haul it upriver from quarries in Georgia. Of course, this changed, like everything, during the Civil War. How spring is a great time to search for unmarked graves because the surviving family usually planted daffodils and periwinkle on top to encourage growth over the newly turned dirt. How, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, people were buried on their backs, with their feet facing east so that when Christ returned, all the dead would rise and walk toward the east to meet Him.
I’m attaching some of the more intriguing photos from our hunts so far. One of my favorites shows a tree growing around a headstone from 1827. It shows how time won’t let anything manmade last forever, but we can work to keep what we value around as long as we can.

Live from where?

It is so weird to hear NBC's Brian Williams say, "Reporting live from Mississippi for the presidential debate." I can't wait to see how the news media deal with this. If the drive from Batesville to Oxford along Highway 278 doesn't kill them.

I love Mississippi. Most of my ancestors are from there. And Oxford is lovely, a genteel oasis on that boring highway. I actually am glad they chose the middle of Mississippi for the first debate because mainstream reporters will be forced to see firsthand that we do exist. I mean "we" as in the small-town South. As a teenager, I remember reading fashion or bride magazines with designer ads that list retail stores in each state where the clothing is sold. They'd have Miami and Boca, which are not the South. Then Texas would be well represented, but as they say, Texas is like a whole other country. It was as if the only Southern city that existed was Atlanta, and there were a whole lot of us who didn't get to Atlanta very often.

Actually, Nashville has come a long way, and I'm not doing that much designer shopping anyway. Besides, I really don't know if I want the secret of our greatness to be shared worldwide.

Football overdose

After the Vols' pitiful showing last weekend, my boys gave up in the third quarter and went out for their own backyard football game. Apparently the main job for Owen, the 5-year-old, was to say, "Down, set, HIKE!" and hand the ball to a big brother.

Well, he must have spent too long "under center," as they say, because when they came in for dinner it was his turn to say the prayer, and he closed his eyes and said, "Down, set... oh wait!!!"

He recovered in time to say his usual, "GodisgreatGodisgoodletusthankhimforourfood.Amen."

Polyester curtains and a redwood deck

Apparently all the same fools who run to Kroger if our local meteorologist mentions snow flurries have decided to cause a gas shortage here in Middle Tennessee. Just here, nowhere else.
No one can explain why, but panicked drivers yesterday caused such a run on gas stations that the paper reported today that 85% were out of gas. OUT. As in "can't get any, now matter how much money you have."
Oh, believe me, it was a crisis here in Brentwood. You know it's bad when moms driving Escalades are sitting 15 cars back in line to get gas, because they don't like to wait for anything. There was no interruption of cell phone service, of course, so those were fired up and in use as the No. 1 boredom-prevention device.
I drive a Ford Explorer, which is like a junior varsity SUV. I justify it by reminding myself that it uses regular gas. But I had let my gas gauge drop below 1/4 and just assumed, like I always do, that I'd fill up after dropping Owen off at preschool Friday. See around here, we're used to getting what we "need" when we need it. So when I pulled into my favorite Mapco, which was eerily not busy, my heart sped up when I saw plastic grocery sacks over all the gas nozzles.
No, no, no, this can't be happening here. Only the teeny tiny country towns actually run out of gas. This Mapco is about 50 yards from Interstate 65 and the biggest mall in the state. I still have to pick up three boys from three different locations and drive to a birthday party at Glow Galaxy! We cannot be OUT OF GAS.
Same story over at the Shell station. Grocery sacks. No gas. No prices on the signs. That's when my "low gas" light came on. I went home and began thinking about hoarding canned goods.
At this point we only had one vehicle that had a couple of gallons in it. To illustrate how our lives were thrown into a tailspin during the Brentwood gas crisis, my husband and the boys RODE BIKES to Owen's soccer game this morning. I, of course, drove the vehicle on fumes because I was bringing the chairs.
On my way there, Tim called my cell phone and whispered, "I just heard someone say the Concord Corner Market has gas and there is no line." I drove straight there and took up spot No. 9 in the newly forming line. Rather than piling up cell phone minutes, I commenced to judging the other people in line in front of me.
"Well, she got done pretty quick," I thought. "She must not really have needed gas. I'M ON FUMES HERE, PEOPLE!" I started thinking it would be a good idea for the store employees to come out and order the lines according to need. If cars have half a tank or more, send them on home. Of course, I assumed I'd be near the front of the line since I was running on FUMES.
My nominations for worst violators of the unwritten gas crisis rules were the woman in the Yukon who kept trying to top off, and the man pulling a trailer that carried a lawn tractor and three five-gallon gas cans. "Oh please, does he really need to MOW today? I'm running on FUMES here, mister, and I'm late for my kid's soccer game."
I mean, what's next? I may actually have to carpool.

Scratch off

All the talk about area school systems with such money problems that they want to lay off coaches and teachers, can't run school buses, can't get new textbooks and can't build enough schools made me wonder about all the Tennessee lottery money that was supposed to go to education. Then I remembered a column I wrote a few years ago about trying to buy my first lottery tickets. "Like to hear it? Here it go..."

It’s sometimes called an idiot tax, but figuring out how to buy a Tennessee Lottery ticket made me feel pretty stupid.
I mean, each time I thought about going into Mapco to buy one just for a lark, I’d get intimidated by some construction worker who reeled off his selections like an auctioneer: “I’ll take four Cash Threes, a Lotto 5, four Powerball quick picks and a pack of Winstons.”
Somehow a guy who hasn’t got sense enough to turn off his truck’s engine while filling the gas tank knows what to choose from the dizzying array of lottery tickets displayed next to the “energy pills” and beef jerky.
Under the guise of research, I’ve visited many local convenience stores, though somehow I always came away with more Hostess Ding Dongs than lottery tickets. Hey, we all have our guilty pleasures.
I finally figured out that there are instant games and online games. But the decisions I had to make were staggering. Do I scratch something or pick numbers? Should I choose my own numbers or let the computer pick them for me? Does Hostess really consider one pack of Ding Dongs to be two servings?
The Cash 4 game alone has 13 different ways to pick your numbers. It’d be easier to stand in the Wal-Mart line behind the woman who’s pushing two carts and hollering at four kids.
I never thought of Williamson County as a lottery hotbed, though officials say we rank 15th out of 95 Tennessee counties in ticket sales.
So why not join the fun?, I asked myself. I know, I know, there are those who believe the lottery is gambling and that gambling is a sin. But so are pride and faultfinding, and anyway, that’s a whole other column.
So I lined up behind the rest of the sinners who had chosen to throw away their entertainment dollars, and I told the jovial Mapco clerk I wanted one Powerball quick pick and four Lotto 5 numbers.
She gestured to the back of the store, where I had to get a separate form to bubble in my own numbers. That display had a sign pointing out that the Moores Lane Mapco had had a $25,000 winner, which I decided would come in handy when the twins leave for college at the same time.
You can guess how this story ends. The two most pitiful aspects of my lottery ticket experience are that my husband had to wake me up at 10:34 to see the Lotto 5 numbers on TV, and that I actually expected to win something.
I didn’t think I’d get the $75 gazillion Powerball prize, but the lottery Web site has enough pictures of folks who have won a couple grand that I thought I’d at least get some new den furniture with my “investment.”
Either that or a year’s supply of Ding Dongs.

Birthday Fun

We celebrated my baby's 5th birthday this weekend with a Candyland cake that I copied from a picture in Taste of Home magazine. We all had so much fun decorating it that I wanted to post a photo of the results.

The perfectionist in me would have made the surface more green like the game board, with green frosting, but the boys all said it's perfect, and each had his own favorite section. I love the Lollipop Forest, made with Dum-Dums, and the twins like Lord Licorice's Lair because they love Twizzlers. It was fun and easy to do, as long as you have a big-enough sheet cake pan!

Do not forget your checkbook

Most men probably have never been to a home party, but I’ll bet their wives have. It’s one of the necessary evils of suburban life.
At a home party, women gather in a friend’s home to view a presentation by a product consultant who will make them wonder how they’ve lived this long without that product.
Since I moved here 17 years ago, I’ve been to most every kind of party there is, beginning with a Longaberger basket party the first year I was married. These baskets are intricately made, which means “expensive.”
In that budget-conscious newlywed year, I forever ruined my husband’s view of home parties by purchasing what is still known in our house as “THE $65 basket.”
The key to a successful home party is the consultant, who, if she knows what she is doing, will suck you in with stories of how the company founder built his fortune one odd job at a time. She will impress you with tales of how, with a quick change of the machine-washable liner, one basket can serve as an ice bucket or, say, a baby cradle, and you suddenly think you need three of them.
Since then, I’ve enjoyed eating snacks and looking over products ranging from jewelry to developmental toys, books, candles, oil paintings and kitchen gadgets.
Which brings me to the Pampered Chef party. If you ever are invited to one, you should go because the consultant prepares food. The samples are worth enduring your husband’s eye roll.
Working as a consultant enables stay-home moms to make money, and the parties give us another reason to get together and talk. As if we needed one.
Not everyone loves them, though. I have a friend who once announced to our group, “Please do not ever invite me to a home party. It will not hurt my feelings, but I will not come, so save yourself the postage.” What a refreshing, straightforward approach.
Like baby showers, I haven't been invited to as many home parties lately. I'm mostly in the graduation gift-buying market.
Husbands usually speak derisively of home parties, probably because a) they either have to clear out of the house for 2 hours or entertain the kids and b) they’re jealous because there aren’t any home parties geared toward men.
I can just see my husband and his friends munching tomato-basil pizza squares and chatting up the merchandise the way we do.
“Dude, you should so get that Weed Eater. It would be perfect for that tight spot between your mailbox and the curb.”
“Yes, and those UT floormats you picked really bring out the brown fleck in your car upholstery.”
Copyright 2004

My idiot license is certainly up to date

This year I received my car tags a whole week before the deadline. This won’t mean much to you, though, if you don’t know about my dysfunctional relationship with County Clerk Elaine Anderson.
In the 17 years I’ve lived here, I’ve hardly ever completed the car tag renewal process correctly. Almost every time I send in the forms for my new stickers, I forget some piece of the puzzle and have to start over.
Perhaps examining my method will uncover its flaw. The form arrives in the mail, and I immediately put it in a “safe spot” on the fridge between the fall baseball sign-up sheets and the McAllister’s Deli coupons.
The form hangs on the fridge until my husband comes home one day and says, “The stickers on your license plate expire at the end of September.”
Ha! Those who know my husband can stop laughing, since you know he would never notice a detail like that. It was really my dad who said it.
I then decide the best way to start the week would be to get that required car inspection crossed off the list. One problem: Back then, the inspection station was closed Mondays, which I didn’t clue into until I drove up and naively thought I was the first person in line.
That’s one of my more common tag renewal blunders. Over the years, I’ve goofed up this process so many ways that the county clerk probably thinks she’s getting punked every time my name comes across the system.
Before the county required vehicles to pass emissions testing, I would invariably write my check for the wrong amount. I didn’t mean to, but bad math is one of my special gifts. Two days later, I’d get a hand-addressed envelope from the county clerk’s office with my check and a polite note congratulating me on my special gift.
Once the county added a visit to the emissions testing center on peculiarly named Merylinger Court to the process, my mishaps multiplied exponentially. I once waited in a 30-minute line at the inspection station only to have the attendant point out that I’d driven there in our minivan while the renewal form was for our other car.
I’ve had a potty-training twin start doing the pee dance in the middle of that inspection line. All hail the spare Pull-Up I found under the console.
In an earnest attempt to do it right, one year I opened the reminder envelope, filled out the renewal form, checked the math on my check and promptly mailed it in. Of course, in my organized blur, I completely omitted the inspection step.
Say what you will about government inefficiency. I deserve the blame for any problems in this relationship.
Believe me, Mrs. Anderson. It’s not you. It’s me.
Copyright 2006

Yet another sign we're getting old

Saturday night, on the way to bed, my husband said, "You know how it used to bother me when I had never even heard of the musical guest on Saturday Night Live? Well, I still usually don't know who they are anymore but now I don't even care because I know I'm not gonna stay awake to see them anyway."

Rock rebel in training

My older twin was listening to the radio, supposedly doing homework in my office, while I washed the dinner dishes. Suddenly he started laughing.
"HA hahaha. That is so weird! Why did he say that? 'You can't have any pudding if you don't eat your meat!' Who does this song?" Henry asked.
Finally. FINALLY! All my years of listening to classic rock had broken through to one of them, and here was the segue I had been waiting for.
"Yeah, that's Pink Floyd," I said coolly as I rinsed a skillet. "That's a really old song, you know. I think it came out when I was about your age."
I should have known he'd love that anthem, "We Don't Need No Education," from their album The Wall. I'm sensing a rebellious tendency in that one, who's usually my "by the book" kid. When he got an Ipod Nano for his birthday in July, he said one of the first songs he wanted to download was "that song 'Teenage Wasteland' by that band The Who."
Instantly I flashed back to the early 80s, when I was really getting into music. My dad had always had a lot of albums he'd let me listen to if I was very VERY careful, and I never got tired of spinning that rotating cover on Led Zeppelin III or trying to figure out who all the people were on the cover of Sgt. Pepper. So when I would see a video of a song I loved on MTV, I'd yell at my dad to "come see this awesome new song omigosh I love this song you have got to hear it wait no here it is wait listen to this part."
This was back when they actually showed videos on MTV and you might only be embarrassed by the production quality, not the vulgarity.
Inevitably my dad would be all, "Oh, yeah, he dances just like James Brown." Or "Meh, they sound just like The Beatles." Hearing that made me a little less excited about the song but more inclined to seek out the links on the rock-and-roll DNA chain.
So it was with measured restraint that I informed Henry that his favorite "new" song was ACTUALLY called "Baba O'Riley," and how The Who was a band that you really needed to SEE performing, like a Shakespeare play, to appreciate the impact. I think I was halfway through my exposition of how I read somewhere that Pete Townsend wrote the song about people who complain about the world's problems but don't do anything about them when I noticed that Henry had already left the room.
He was probably thinking, "It's rock music, lady. Don't overthink it."

That covered wagon has a glass ceiling

For his fourth birthday last year, Owen received a big tub of Army stuff with about a hundred of those little green plastic soldiers. Then he also got a giant bag of about a hundred little red plastic fire fighters. He mixes all those heroes together when he plays his favorite thing to play, which is going around and setting up what he calls "forts" in various locations in our playroom and den.

Last Christmas he got one of those Wild West "toobs," which is a plastic cylinder full of miniature figures from the Wild West like cowboys, Indians, some tee pees, covered wagons and various livestock. Owen happily assimilated these into the "forts," along with some Playmobil knights in armor. So now our Thomas the Tank Engine train table looks like some surrealistic tableau in which a modern fire brigade and some Star Wars Happy Meal toys are defending the Ardennes woods from marauding cowboys and knights with donkeys and Lego airplanes.

Yes, it's a very macho scene at our house of three boys, but I had no idea how male oriented we really were until last night. I sat watching my favorite new guilty-pleasure TV show, "Million Dollar Listing," when I felt like I was being watched. On the end table next to me stood the pioneer mom, complete with apron and swaddled infant, and an American Indian squaw (can you say that word anymore?) kneeling as if before a fire.

Out of all those thousands of tiny plastic figures, Owen had managed to cull the only two females from the group and isolated them from the action on a dusty end table in the den.

So good luck, Sarah Palin. Let me know what it's like if you actually get to play with the big boys.

Most evil

So I thought about it all summer, and I've decided that the French pedicure must be the most evil of all beauty treatments.
It hit me as I sat in the orthodontist waiting room across from another mom who had on the standard Capri pants and sandals. Scanning down to her feet, I noticed that she had the most precise French pedicure I'd ever seen, and I tried to picture the person who did that lovely job.
My biggest problem with the French pedi, beside the fact that you are paying someone to work on your FEET, is that it requires two things I don't have a lot of: (1) a good, clear block of previously unclaimed time to just sit and let someone work on your feet, and (2) anywhere from $35 to $50 about every two weeks.
Those things and the image of a nail tech hunched over my feet in pursuit of that straight white line under my toenails make me hate the French pedi.
Or maybe I'm just jealous.

I need a vacation from my vacation

I’ve stopped reading women’s magazines, and I’m still here.
I became a better mom when I put down the parenting magazines and just played with my kids. And my brain has been calmer since I stopped caring what Glamour thinks about my career path.
Now, I should mention that I majored in magazines in college. My undergraduate major really was magazine editing and production, so it may give my boycott credibility to know that I once wanted to devote my life to making magazines.
Over the years, though, I’ve whittled down my list of “must-read” magazines because I got tired of hearing headlines in my head: “You need these 10 fashion must-haves for fall. Your butt will jiggle less if you do these exercises. Your family will worship you if you cook this stew tonight.”
These publications are full of unsolicited attempts to improve my life. The last straw? An article suggesting I put fresh sheets on the bed the day I leave for vacation so I still get that “hotel” feeling when I return home.
If you could see my house the day we leave for a vacation, you’d know why that sent me over the edge. Let’s just say that if firefighters had to break into our house while we were gone, they’d assume someone had ransacked it before setting it ablaze.
Regardless of how much planning goes into an out-of-town trip, there’s always a last-minute frenzy to get out the door, especially if you have children. And a frenzy usually leaves a mess.
Toddlers are the unknown in the trip preparation equation. The day you are to leave, your 2-year-old will wake up at 5:30 and demand more attention than usual because he can’t figure out what the suitcases are for.
You’ll find yourself pumping Goldfish crackers into your toddler like coins into a parking meter, buying time to pack your make-up bag so all of Destin won’t think you’re arriving after a lengthy hospital stay.
Instead of checking off the list of beach toys your older children wanted to bring, you end up offering things you’d never otherwise let the baby play with just to keep him occupied.
“Here, Ethan. Play with this butterfly hair clip. Look how pretty. Here, look at the newspaper. See Daddy’s calculator? Push all the pretty buttons. Wanna hold Mommy’s hair dryer?”
So forgive me, Good Housekeeping, if I don’t have time to run around pouring Pine Sol into all the toilets before I leave so it smells like a pine forest instead of a musty basement when we get back.
Besides, it wouldn’t be a homecoming unless we open the door after a week away and one of us says, “Whew, who forgot to take out the trash?”

Copyright 2005

My French pedicure's crooked

Heather Armstrong of Dooce.com recently wrote about “first-world conversations,” as in something you would never hear someone say in a third-world country. Her examples:
“This I-phone is too heavy.”
“Someone was using my favorite treadmill this morning, so I was forced to use the stationary bike.”
“This refrigerator isn’t big enough. Let’s buy a bigger one and put this one in the garage.”
You know, the kinds of complaints you hear around here ALL THE TIME.
I’m always walking up on people ragging on the cleaning lady or telling horror stories about contractors. ANY contractors. If you’re getting any elective work done to your house or pool, consider yourself fortunate.
Oh, I can’t finish this right now. This Hostess Ding Dong doesn’t have enough cream filling, and it’s really getting on my nerves.

Personal Ad for Parents

Starting when my twins were about 8 or 9, they’d occasionally come home from a sleepover or an outing with friends with a couple of unsavory habits. They weren’t smoking or anything, but one morning after spending the night with the youngest of four boys, one of mine casually asked, “Is ‘f***’ a bad word?’ or they’d say, ‘We spent the whole night looking up funny videos on You Tube!’”
I remember wishing I could place a personal ad somewhere to seek out like-minded parents who were trying to raise their kids with generally the same ideas my husband and I were. That way I could ask the stuff I wanted to know but couldn’t manage to bring up without awkwardness in a normal front-porch conversation. Something like:

“Parents of boys seeking other parents with boys who have manners and don’t break stuff on purpose. Decent phone etiquette a plus. Picky eaters okay, but cruelty to younger siblings (yours or ours) or a smart mouth won’t be tolerated. We promise to maintain lights out during sleepovers at midnight for younger kids, a bit later for older. If your son has cable TV in his room or unlimited Internet access, our kids probably won’t sleep over there. We can guarantee no (real) weapons at our house and no Johnny Knoxville-type stunts or neighborhood roaming will be allowed. Fun, mom-approved food and drinks available with preset limits. Willing to do drop off, pick up or both.”

If I did get that involved in my kids’ friendships, though, they probably wouldn’t have any friends at all.

Daily Elvis: Busted!

Based on my research, the theory that you'll see or hear one Elvis reference per day has not borne true. I traveled through two days before I saw anything else Elvis. On Thursday I drove up behind a state-of-Tennessee-sanctioned Elvis license plate. You don't see too many of those in Williamson County. When I noticed that the plate benefits the Elvis Presley Memorial Trauma Center (aka The Med) in Memphis, I thought of the old Baptist Hospital near downtown. Whenever Elvis was in the hospital for whatever reason, I could always tell which room was his when we drove by because the windows of his suite were all covered in aluminum foil. I remember thinking, "You're not fooling me, Elvis. I know you're in there."

Some people who've come to this blog tell me they didn't know I was such an Elvis fan. The truth is I'm not a fan in that I only own one Elvis CD and I've never been to a candlelight vigil. For some reason I have always had this bizarre compulsion to bring him up whenever I can. Like I do with biscuits.

Good luck in 6th grade! Don't lose your $150 calculator.

Middle school has rocked for almost two weeks now. My oldest boys have had a smooth transition to 6th grade: bus ride, fine; lockers, fine; teachers, great. I am still adjusting to being a mom of more mature students. In other words, I am trying not to micromanage.
I can’t stop, though, because I have more invested in this school year -literally. It started with two $90 checks I wrote to the school for “supplies,” including PE uniforms, but we had to buy additional pens, pencils, paper and a colored binder for each class.
It’s convenient, and I almost prefer not knowing exactly what I’m paying for, since things started to get ridiculous during elementary school when half their supply bags would be filled with paper towels, wet wipes, Kleenex, Purell and other classroom maintenance items.
Then Mason made the JV football team, for which we would pay a $35 fee plus another $70 on team clothing that is optional unless you are a mean parent who wants to deny your son the chance to be cool and wear a team hoodie around town.
Out of the blue Henry went out for cross country, and my parents generously sprung for designated running shoes since Henry somehow grew into a men’s size 9.5 over the summer. Add another $25 for the cross country fee plus their random team clothing, and you can see why I’m hypervigilant about asking them, “Do you have your cleats? Where are your running shoes?” and oh, yeah, “Did you do your homework?”
My husband advocates the “throw them in the ocean and they’ll learn to swim” approach to back to school, reasoning that one strike for a missed assignment will make more of an impression on them than my nagging. I relented, but then on the third day of school, the math teacher sent home a note about graphing calculators. An experienced mom warned me to get the one that they’d use next year, which happened to be the one the teacher would be using.
Hubby did a preliminary internet price search. After a minute, he called from my office, “How much do you think those calculators are?”
I paid about $9.99 for the one I use at home, so I considered what I thought would be a ridiculous price for a 6th-grade tool. “Ummmmm, $55!”
“They’re $149 each! At Wal-Mart!” he yelled back.
Times two. Ah, the joy of twins. Guess my fall wardrobe will come from Target.

Girls vs. Boys

I don’t know when I’ll stop being surprised that not everyone in the world thinks the way I do.
I can’t reconcile, for example, the way some parents encourage segregation of little boys and girls during group activities in a sort of early Mars vs. Venus brainwashing.
I am not naïve enough to disregard the fact that some gender identification is innate. Most boys will want to do boy things, and most girls will show girly tendencies regardless of parental influence.
I just don’t think adults should go out of our way to polarize grade-school kids any more than they already polarize themselves.
One year when my husband and I taught children’s Sunday school, we had a class with 11 boys and two girls on the roll, only one of whom attended regularly.
If these girls minded being outnumbered, they didn’t show it. But one day at the start of the term, a mom of another girl who was supposed to be in the class stopped in the doorway and said disdainfully, “Oh, no. Look at all the boys!” She then continued down the hall to find a more suitable class for her daughter.
Another time we let them divide into their own project groups of three or four. A mom approached a girl who was happily coloring with two boys and said, “Don’t you want to come over here with the girls?” The child looked confused but went anyway, since the adult leader’s question implied that her choice was wrong.
I’m not one to give dolls to a boy in a misguided attempt to make him equal parts masculine and feminine. I just think people who work with children shouldn’t default to “boys vs. girls” just because it’s easy to do.
When my sons attended a local activity camp last summer, the daily competitions were always grouped by gender. Even the most popular TV shows, like The Apprentice and Survivor, do it. You don’t need a master’s degree to find other grouping techniques, such as having kids pick colored or numbered pieces of paper out of a cup, or even the old “count off by threes” method.
If you’re pitting girls against boys at every opportunity, though, no one wins. If the boys beat the girls, it raises the cootie quotient. If boys get beaten by girls, they see it as a tragedy, and their co-existence becomes even more tenuous.
If they learn to work together early on, though, there’s a chance they’ll feel like they’re at least from the same planet when they get to middle school.
Copyright 1/05

Daily Elvis

This morning on The Big Show with John Boy and Billy, my preferred radio morning team, one of the trivia contest questions referred to Elvis. This lady had to name three Elvis songs on 10 seconds. She went all Early Elvis with Hound Dog, Teddy Bear, etc. I think I would have chosen the big production numbers from the 70s, like Kentucky Rain or Suspicious Minds.

I'm thinking these will get more difficult now that Elvis Week is over.

Daily Elvis Reference

Today is the 31st anniversary of the day Elvis died at Graceland. I lived in Memphis until 1991, and he died when I was in fourth grade. I got off the school bus, turned on the TV (instead of starting homework like I was supposed to) and was surprised to see news coverage on. TV news stations didn't interrupt programming with so-called breaking news back then unless it truly was newsworthy.

This weekend's Elvis reference comes thanks to CMT, on which showed Jailhouse Rock today. So cool. In that jail dance scene you can see moves that look a lot like stuff Michael Jackson did 30 years later. To me, those backup dancer/inmates all look about 45 years old. To look at Elvis, he had no choice but to be famous somehow.

Being a walk-on is no walk in the park

I’ve heard rumblings on youth sports sidelines lately. Another generation of parents is figuring out that most community sports leagues accept kids as young as 4 or 5. By the time those kids funnel into middle school with the players who’ve also been on travel teams, the quality of talent leaves no room for walk-ons.
In other words, your kid can’t wait until 6th grade to decide to play on the school soccer team. Thus parents, like me, of kids who love sports but aren’t “elite” or “select” athletes feel pressure to make their kids specialize early in a sport or at least keep them from taking a season off.
At age 9, my twin boys have played team sports half their lives, and they’re not great at it.
But they want to be. They love being a teammate. They love wearing the jersey and the helmet and cleats and the Under Armour, which does not fit 3rd-graders the same way it fits pro tackles, by the way.
Equipment like Under Armour and training methods once reserved for professionals are now readily available to children in our area, if their parents can afford it, of course. Cool Springs has about five sports training facilities that cater to kids.
I’ll confess. We took our boys to Showtime Sports Academy last spring, thinking they could learn the right way to hit a baseball, feel successful and have more fun. Now Henry has a picture-perfect swing, if he could just keep his eyes open as the ball comes his way.
I can’t believe my 9-year-olds had a batting coach. Though the guy was awesome, I hated paying money for that. As we signed up, I felt like I was taking a step toward raising a Todd Marinovich-type “roboathlete.”
My friends in elementary school didn’t worry about their high school athletic careers. But youth sports seem more serious now. Besides, fewer backyard baseball games break out when the PlayStation beckons. And in this Amber Alert age, we fearful parents won’t let our kids just roam the neighborhood looking for a pickup game anymore.
Some despotic parents see youth sports leagues not as play but as a training process akin to natural selection; let the cream rise to the top, as they say, and if we losers who play for fun can’t hack it, we should get out.
Talk about a reflected sense of self. What if your glory days were behind you at age 12?
Move over, trophy wife. Make way for the trophy kid.
First published 9/05.

Daily Elvis Reference

Today on George Shrinks (don't ask), George's little brother Junior randomly appeared dressed as the White Jumpsuit Version, foofed hair and everything.

Elvis appears in a lot of kids' shows. Or maybe I just see a lot of kids' shows.

Daily Elvis Reference

Elvis and Priscilla Barbie Doll set is unveiledThe Associated Press - Aug 11, 2008
Full coverage »

Elvis and Priscilla Barbies! Why has no one thought of this before?

SO awesome.

In Which a Reclusive Housewife Gets Good News

I was minding my own business, watching a few minutes of a TiVoed two-hour documentary about Johnny Cash that I’d been trying to find time to watch for about a week, when the phone rang. Caller ID just said, “Out of Area,” so I let the machine get it.
I didn’t expect to hear the heavy New York accent on my answering machine, and at first my son Henry and I both thought the voice said he was calling from Geico, which thrilled Henry because he and his twin bro love that Geico gecko on the TV commercials. Of course, the cockney gecko can’t compete with the “freecreditreport.com” dude who laments his career singing in a pirate restaurant.
Suddenly, I jumped up. The New Yawker hadn’t said “Geico.” He had said “Guideposts.” I felt lightheaded. This was no telemarketer. This was an editor from Guideposts magazine calling to tell me I had been chosen as one of 15 participants in the 2008 Guideposts Writers Workshop! Immediately I felt like Steve Martin as Navin Johnson in The Jerk, running around with the new phone book in his hand and yelling, “I’m somebody now!”
Upon hearing my insane whooping, all three boys and our dog ran toward me and jumped around me. “What?! Who was it?” “What did he say?” “Woof!” “What did he SAY?!!”
I think my explanation was anticlimactic. I did not mention a Lamborghini, Holiday World, a free beach condo, delayed school start or anything else that would have interested them.
“That writing contest. I won! They picked me! I’m going to New York,” I tried to explain. I don’t think my sons even remembered that I had entered this summer. They know about Guideposts, the little religious magazine, because we subscribe to it and because I interned at their New York offices in the summer of 1989 as part of the American Society of Magazine Editors program.
Back then, when I found out that I would be spending the summer working for Guideposts, I was not thrilled. With grand expectations for my career in journalism, I had expressed on my application my preference for some of the sexier magazines on the list, including Architectural Digest, Glamour and Time. I got Guideposts, the only religious magazine of the bunch.
Two weeks into that summer, though, discontent began to spread around the NYU dorms where all the interns lived. Most of the jobs were not as sexy as we all had assumed. My roommates were doing true intern work – making copies and fetching coffee at Popular Science and Seventeen. On the other hand, I had an actual office with a view of the actual Chrysler Building. I didn’t have to put my hair in a bun and recite Bible verses at work. I sat in on meetings with creative, fun and funny professionals who asked my opinions, gave me small writing assignments, and taught me about finding the inspirational in the mundane.
My kids don’t get it yet, but the fact that most of those editors are still working there says the most to me about the benefits of working at the seemingly unglamorous Guideposts.
I can’t wait to see them all again.

Daily Elvis Reference

The Toon Disney show "The Replacements" has a character on it that looks just like Later Elvis, white jumpsuit and all.

For the record, my kids do not watch this show. It was on while we were waiting for "House of Mouse." They watch fewer and fewer cartoons and more documentaries. If there's a show on with reenactors and battle scenes, they're mesmerized.

Daily Elvis Reference

It's Elvis Week, which makes it the perfect time to begin tracking my daily Elvis references. I read somewhere that if you pay attention, you'll notice at least one pop culture reference to Elvis Presley every day. Here's what I've heard so far:

• A roving reporter on Fox 17's Tennessee Mornings wore an Elvis wig and sideburns during his coverage of the tomato festival.
• TV Land this week is running a show called Myths and Legends: Elvis in which they consider whether Elvis and Oprah are related and why Elvis carried a handgun into the Oval Office when he met with Nixon.

Wouldn't you?

Summer bummers

Summer brings out one of my special gifts. I have a knack for arriving at the pool the moment the lifeguards blow the rest-period whistle.
I don’t know if this goes on at other pools, where the kids have to sit out for 10 minutes every hour, but when the YMCA lifeguards signal the mandatory rest period, my boys act like they just saw a puppy get run over.
I spend “rest” period slathering two twitchy 9-year-olds with sunscreen.
No. 1 Son likes to remind me that grown-ups are allowed to swim during rest period. I chortle as I picture myself in my big old mom bathing suit entertaining the other parents with an Esther Williams routine.
Kids face other peculiar summer bummers, though. For example, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood is the one show No. 3 Son loves to watch. But my older boys, who would say they are way too cool for Mr. Rogers, get sucked in during summer break and sometimes watch it with their baby brother.
The undisputed highlight of the show is when the Neighborhood Trolley comes out. Somehow I never noticed that Mr. Rogers controls the trolley with a little switch on the window seat. How naive am I?
But it’s a colossal bummer when the trolley leaves Lady Aberlin and the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. The other day No. 2 son yelled out “Noooooooooo!” as the trolley disappeared into the little tunnel. “It was just getting good!” he said.
Time for him to study some flash cards.
Back when homes had only one TV and I got to stay up late during the summer, I’d watch The Waltons or Barnaby Jones with my mom and dad. As soon as the end credits started rolling, I’d sit real still and quiet, praying they’d forget it was my bedtime. Before the Action News 5 theme music ended, though, they’d remember.
If Dad took me to the pool the next day, my shrill voice made him a captive audience for all my coolest swimming tricks. What a nerve-wracking time he must have had as I shrieked for him to watch my mermaid flip: “Daddy! Daddy! Look, Daddy! Daddy, watch! Watch this, Daddy! Daddy, watch. Oh, you missed it. Now WATCH this time, Daddy! Daddy, LOOK!”
I’m now paying my pool penance, though. How many times have I witnessed my gangly kids attempt a cannonball? You’d never know from the smile plastered on my face.
But to a kid, no bummer is as harsh as when you’re strolling through Kroger, wheedling your mom for Popsicles and minding your own business, and you come upon the clerks dismantling the Fourth of July display and stocking the shelves with school supplies.
Suddenly rest period doesn’t seem so long.

copyright Jill Burgin 8/05

Mom drama amplifies class list anxiety

The phone calls started last Tuesday.
“Do you know who your boys’ teachers are yet?”
“No, I didn’t know the lists were ready,” I said, suddenly feeling very much out of the loop.
My friend took a deep breath. “Well,” she said, “Stephanie’s mom called and said she has Mrs. Swanson, which means she already called her students yesterday, so we didn’t get her. And Mrs. Evans apparently mailed her kids a letter, so you didn’t get her.”
This friend and I are working on an arranged marriage between one of her girls and one of my twin boys, so we hoped that somehow they’d end up in the same class every year through high school.
Five minutes after we hung up, the phone rang again. It was Stephanie’s mom.
“Hey, do the boys know whose class they’re in yet?”
Just like that, I got caught up in a frenzy of conjecture. The boys begged me to do a daily fly-by at school to see if the lists had been taped up outside. I began to feel like a stage mom waiting to see if my kid got a callback to an audition.
If you want some late-summer excitement, forget the presidential race or the Olympics. Early August has its own unique fervor because this is when the elementary class lists are posted.
All over the county, friends are calling friends. Moms check with each other at church and the grocery store. Though dads somehow seem to stay out of it, everyone else wants to know who’s in their class.
For about a week, the anticipation was almost unbearable. Oh, and the boys were excited, too. After those first phone calls, my house was buzzing. Both my 8-year-olds hovered in a far corner, speculating about which teachers they would have.
Trying not to be too much of a geek about it, I listened a lot and asked a few judicious questions about the process.
Although they are young, each year they’ve had an idea of which teacher they want. From what I can tell, at this age it’s based on school bus chatter about which teachers smile a lot as they retrieve their classes from the cafeteria or which ones play along during field day.
The boys called their friends to fill in the blanks on the class roster. Finally, my son’s future father-in-law cut to the chase, drove down to the school and simply asked who was where. What a concept. Once again, all that mom drama for naught.
Sadly, it turns out my boy and his girl are separated this year, which means we’ll have to work a bit harder to keep up the arranged marriage.

Originally published in The Tennessean 8/04.

How To Choose the Perfect Name for Your Baby

I’ll tell you right now the best way to decide if a name you’re considering is really the perfect name for your baby.
Walk around the house saying the name out loud 28 times in a row. You can yell it a few times, for reality’s sake. Maybe throw in a couple of phrases you might actually use once the littl’un gets here, like, “Come here, Sputnik. No, no, Sputnik. Spuuuuuut-nik, look at Mommy. Sputnik, stoppit!”
I guarantee that if the name hasn’t made you nauseous after that drill, it can stay on the approved list.
I know this method works because almost every week I see (or rather hear) plenty of parents who should have used it before they had their kids. Yesterday I was in the Brentwood Library’s children’s section when I realized that I could never name a child “Montgomery” because the Montgomery I had the misfortune to encounter was not at all interested in using library-rated behavior. Montgomery was doing everything his mom did not want him to do, and she used his whole name every time she tried to check him.
“Montgomery, sweetie, please get off the table. Montgomery, settle down. No, Montgomery, we share the trains on the train table. No, no, we don’t bite, Montgomery.”
I thought at least the lady would have defaulted to a nickname after a while, but no, she was not going to call the child Monty or Mo or even Gummy. It was the full Montgomery or nothing at all.

Extreme Makeover: Dorm Edition

What I wouldn’t give to go back to college right now.
I don’t miss the early-morning classes, of course. Nor do I want another shot at Western Civ. I took both sections of that class twice.
I want a do-over so I can redecorate my old dorm room.
“Dorm décor” was an oxymoron in the dark ages of 1985, when no major retailers marketed to what could be the most lucrative back-to-school group yet – college dorm rats. Now stores are capitalizing on the university students’ yen to personalize their regulation spaces.
Sears has pounced on the irresistible Ty Pennington and his “TYU” line. Linens-N-Things calls their department “Destination Dorm,” with righteous offerings to dress up your landlocked dorm room as a tiki lodge.
It makes me feel bad for my pitiful 10- x 14-foot room at UT’s Humes Hall. Back then, I thought I was pretty bitchin’ with my blue plastic milk crates, James Dean posters, New Wave album art and 40-lb. Smith Corona word processor. Luxury was finding out I could get a carpet square for $10.
Back then, the luckiest girls on the hall had refrigerators; microwaves were outlawed at UT. And you practically had to shop for the elusive extra-long twin sheets in Atlantis; they were that hard to find. Now they’re all over the Internet. My roommate had to make do with a tucked-in flat sheet.
“Making do” won’t do it anymore, though. You don’t need Mom’s cast-off furniture when the Bed Bath & Beyond Web site has sample photos of dorm room setups so you can pull together the perfect ensemble.
For a couple hundred dollars, you can have a college crib worthy of a parade of homes. No wistful housewife could resist BB&B’s Henna Dreams collection, with the pink pom-pom window curtain and the pendant disc chandelier in “kermit.”
Guess what color that is. All you need to know is that it perfectly complements the average dorm’s cinder-block walls. Most universities have virtual dorm tours, too, so you shouldn’t be surprised on move-in day.
Whether or not you’ve even met your roommate, y’all can coordinate online during the summer and have Pier 1 ship your “Design U” selections to your dorm so your dad won’t be angry all the way to Western Kentucky because he had to tie your corduroy papasan chair on top of the Yukon.
Don’t laugh too hard. The National Retail Federation estimates that college kids and parents (OK, parents) spent $2.6 billion in 2004 on dorm or apartment furnishings and décor. That doesn’t include electronics. Or books. Oh yeah, books -- the real reason we go to college in the first place.
If I’d had a prettier dorm room, maybe I would have curled up there with my Western Civ textbook more often. On the paisley “Las Flores” quilt from Pottery Barn, of course.

Can't Teach an Old Mom New Tricks

Last week was orientation at the preschool my 5-year-old will attend this year, the same school my 12-year-old twins began attending when they were 1-year-olds.
Since the stairstep method of family planning prevails in our society, most of the new moms there don’t have a seven-year gap between kids like I do.
I walk in the building where lots of these new moms are gathered, and it looks like sorority rush. Girls ten or twelve years younger than me greet each other with squeals, dressed like bright summer flowers holding monogrammed purses.
Their faces turn earnest as the teachers outline the things their babies will do during the preschool day. With apprehension, they glance at their boyish husbands when the teacher mentions the little ones feeding themselves at lunchtime.
We old moms try to contain our impatience with their rookie questions, remembering the guy in high school who always asked, “If we study this, will we pass the test?”
I can’t judge too harshly, though. My first time around, I was the biggest wad of maternal anxiety ever, leaving my twin babies to fend for themselves in the rough world of church preschool.
Now that I am a mom over 35, I’ll never forget three special words the doctor said to me at my first OB visit – advanced maternal age. I felt like I’d be raising my own grandchild.
By the time you move from preschool to elementary school, not much has changed. When I was a new mom, I used to think older moms were so cranky and unenthusiastic. Now that I’m 40 years old with a little 'un, I realize they weren’t cranky. They’d just done it all before.
So now I’m one of them. I want to be involved in my kids’ school. I’m not going to clap and sing about it, but I’ll be there.
No, nothing can match a new mom’s enthusiasm for helping out in class, and school wouldn’t be as fun without them. We old moms, however, have been down this path, and we usually have to leave to pick up another kid soon. We just want the new moms to tell us what to bring and when.
My friend Trish says she often finds herself saying, “Sounds great. I’ll do whatever.” I think that’s going to be my new motto at school.
Class Halloween party? Sounds great. No, you can do the craft. I promise I don’t mind. Lollipop spiders? Yes, that will be very cute. The kids will love it. I’ll do whatever.
In fact, it would be nice to hear that from the kids every once in a while. “Sounds great, Mom. I’ll do whatever.”