Hipsters have ruined Christmas fashion too

From this week's Brentwood Home Page column:

I’ve been trying to figure out how it all went wrong for Christmas sweaters.

You know they’re a big joke now, don’t you?

Starting last Christmas, the themed sweaters with tons of sequins, appliquéd snowmen, ribbon trim and glitter officially reached that point where they’re so out, they’re in.

After about a decade of being out of style, Christmas sweaters have become in demand at vintage clothing stores and Goodwill outlets.

Folks are pulling the bejeweled garments from the back of the closet and listing them on eBay. In fact, entire websites are devoted to selling “ugly” Christmas sweaters. I was feeling pretty good about myself until I saw a sweater like one I used to wear on sale for $15 on one of those sites.

Do you hear what I hear? It’s the sound of me getting old.

Why the resurgence in scornful popularity? Because hipsters decided it would be hilarious to wear old, grandma-style Christmas sweaters to their holiday parties.

Get it? They’re being ironic. It’s like saying, “Normally I’m very cool. But the fact that I’m wearing this hideously overdone sweater is funny because it’s so not me!”

They gleefully post photos of themselves online, hugging, laughing and showing off their garland-trimmed Santas or reindeer flying over one shoulder and down the back.

I think the irony is lost on the older generation, who probably see nothing humorous about wearing a perfectly good Christmas sweater to a Christmas party. When else would you wear it?

The part I think is funny is that most people viewing the photos wouldn’t get the joke, thinking those in the picture just had bad taste in sweaters.

“Why is this funny? It’s a bunch of people at a Christmas party. Ooh, those snowmen on her sweater are trimmed in rabbit fur! I wonder where you get one of those?”

A mere 10 years ago I could wear a Christmas sweater occasionally and not feel weird about it. I still own two: a vest and a cardigan. I happen to think they’re really cute or else I wouldn’t have bought them from the Chadwick’s catalog in about 1997.

In fact, the vest is awesome because it has these felt stockings on it that are adorned with real live 3-D jingle bells.

Of course, I haven’t worn them out in public in a while because they’re about as fashionable as denim jumpers.

I don’t own one of those. Anymore.

The truth is that I only wear my Christmas sweaters around the house. You know why? Because they make my 7-year-old little boy happy.

So take that, all you hipster wannabes. My kid thinks my tacky sweater is cool.

I’m even going to save it for the day he wants to wear it … to some party where he can win the ugliest Christmas sweater contest.

Yeah, I know Halloween's over, but I gotta say this

I know one thing my older boys did not do this Halloween: roll anyone’s yard.
Come to find out that there’s been a whole lotta nighttime pranking in my neighborhood lately. Most of it has NOT been as good-natured as the two times my own kids rolled someone, which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago.
Ever since I joked about our buying TP for my kids and a couple of their friends so they could roll another kid’s yard during a recent sleepover, I’ve gotten e-mails and Facebook messages detailing all manner of midnight vandalism.
Of course, everyone now assumes my kids did it all.
So I’ll just set their records straight. They rolled two friends. The friends know who they are. They did not touch anyone’s house or doorbell. They did not spread anything on the windows of anyone’s house. They did not touch anyone’s vehicle or patio furniture.
The only product my kids threw on anyone else’s property was toilet tissue, Publix brand two-ply. No eggs, no paint, no pickle relish. (I know, sick, right?)
They didn’t even fork anybody.
Needless to say, our family won’t be chuckling about our faux delinquents around the dinner table anymore, since my flip remarks probably made most of the people who live in my neighborhood assume my kids are straight outta juvie.
And why wouldn't they? After all, some idiot wrote about it in the (online) newspaper!
Many parents, however, have whispered to me tales of their own kids' failed attempts at neighborhood naughtiness and lessons learned the hard way.
For example, nothing ruins a fun night of TP-ing faster than dropping your cell phone in the bushes.
I also learned (second-hand) that if you plan a night of juvenile jocularity, your getaway vehicle should not have a loud, distinctive muffler that your neighbors hear regularly as you drive out of the subdivision on school mornings.
In fact, the closest thing my older kids came to committing a crime on Halloween is the fact that they are six feet tall and they still went trick-or-treating. Some towns have age limits on that.
They did make an attempt to go out in “costume,” but at age 14 Halloween’s not about dressing up anymore. It’s about getting candy. A LOT of candy.
I think next year we’ll encourage them to hang around here, maybe pull the old “live scarecrow on the porch” trick and leave the midnight TP runs to some other unsuspecting parents.
It just goes to show that one kid’s hilarious joke is another mom’s home maintenance nightmare.

Great idea on paper

Just a heads up: These are the plastic eggs I bought last year for Owen to take to his preschool Easter egg hunt. They're camouflage because he LOVES military stuff. I saw them and thought, "What a cool thing! Owen will be so excited because they are just so HIM."

The thing about camouflage eggs is that when you hide them, they're CAMOUFLAGED, so it takes every bit of fun out of the hunt when your child can't find any of the eggs HE brought.

It also spices up the lawn mowing process later in the summer when you inevitably can't find all the camo eggs and your husband mows over them in the grass.

So, just so we're clear: The point of an Easter egg hunt is for the kids to FIND the eggs. Don't buy grass- and dirt-colored eggs.

Erin go blah!

I do not love St. Patrick's Day because it has always started off badly in my house.

Green is not a standard color in my family's wardrobe. That means my kids can't easily participate in the holiday's main activity (besides drinking beer), which is wearing green.

Therefore, you can always guarantee that I will begin every March 17 with a stressful dash around the house looking for any shirt in the green family.

Except for the years when I went to Snowden Jr. High School, where our mascot was the Greenies, I have always had to wear something with a green stripe or green letters or green checks.

I spend the day fending off pinchers by saying, "Nope, wait, see this? This little thread right here is green!"

My kids are doing it, too. My youngest, who was the most into the wearing of the green, had to choose between his older brother's too-big gym shirt from Brentwood Middle School or a too-small green T-shirt of his that I'd dug out of a Goodwill bag.

If I were smart, I'd go spend a little green on something green for next year.

A "laptop" sounds like such an innocent thing

My new laptop has aged me by about 20 years.

Maybe not literally, but when I try to use it, I feel like a grandma getting her first look at one of them newfangled telephone machines.

I'm always having to call over my kids and ask, "Now what's this here thang do?" "Wait, what was that you did?" "Hey, uh, where'd that thing I wrote go? It just disappeared!!"

I sound just like this 50-ish woman who was a grad student at Memphis State when I was in my, ahem, fifth year of college there (after my parents had given me three years to figure it out at UT). We were in a brand new class called Electronic Publishing, and Professor Art Terry was showing us a Mac with - gasp! - a program called Windows. We all sat agog as he showed us the mouse and used it to click on the drop-down menus. We couldn't wait to get out fingers on it, and at first the cursors flew wildly around the screens as if we were trying to steer a car with our elbows.

Most of us, when we didn't catch onto something right away, were too cool to say anything. Not Miss 50, though. She'd panic at the slightest blink on the screen and yell out stuff similar to what I posted above.

Of course, now I am closer to 50 than I am to 20, and I sometimes find myself sitting slack-jawed in front of this-here new computer.

For one thing, it has a shiny new version of Word, rather than the B.C. version I had been using. That's awesome, except that the icons are all in the wrong place, and I have to stop and think, "Where is that spell check icon? On my OLD computer, it was always right here where I could find it."

The worst thing you can do to an impatient person is make them have to stop and think about how to do something.

The laptop keyboard is my biggest nemesis right now. The delete button is in the wrong spot, "page up" and "page down" are switched, and "control" is right where my hand wants to reach to hit "shift." Instead of capitalizing something, I end up hitting Ctrl + T and opening a new tab or something equally jarring when I'm trying to be brilliant.

Don't even get me started on the touchpad.

My husband keeps telling me I could get a laptop keyboard, but that would not work very well when I'm using it in my Mister Chair.

To top it all off, I think this screen is telling me I need bifocals.

If the MPAA lived here

After watching the trailer for the new Jackie Chan movie, I realized that my house is usually rated PG, with "mild action violence and some rude humor."

Another reason moms aren't boys

For the record, telling boys, "You're shaking the whole house," will not discourage them from doing whatever loud, thumping, crashing activity they're doing. In fact, if they're like my boys, they'll probably say, "Cool!" and assume you're cheering them on.

I know this because I work from home. My desk backs up to the wall on which their new Nerf hoop is located.

I cannot concentrate during a game of what they call "Contact Basketball" because they do shake the whole house, and I cannot edit a magazine about Glasgow, Kentucky, when it sounds like they are literally killing each other.

When I do get up and check on them through the glass door, they all pop up with innocent smiles. The youngest gives me a thumbs up, saying cheerfully, "We're okay!!!"

BTW, do not Google "basketball injuries" if you're queasy about bone stuff.

Growing old together is fun!

Last night Tim couldn't find the Chap Stick in its usual spot. He opened the junk drawer and pulled out a tube of Herpecin, which is awesome for cold sores. Even so, the tube looks a little different from Chap Stick.

Since his arms are not long enough to read stuff properly, he held it up and asked me, "Is this Chap Stick?"

I answered affirmatively.

"OK, good," he said. "I just wanted to make sure it wasn't glue stick."

Too much togetherness

Last Tuesday morning the Explorer wouldn't start. No problem, really. That's why we're a two-car family, right? We got Owen to school, then I took Tim back to work and left the truck sitting in the driveway to think about it and come back to me when it had a better answer.

When it still wouldn't talk later that night, Tim charged the battery for a while. Nothing. OK, no big deal. We weren't trying to pack it up and drive to Memphis for Thanksgiving.

Big John Deere hat-wearing boy comes with a tow truck on Wednesday morning and hauls it to Gateway, where I anticipate it will be fixed by that afternoon, maybe Saturday, since it's a holiday and all.

Get the bright idea to Google possible answers, since I self-diagnose all the time anyway. Internet thinks it could be anything from a spark plug to a fuel pump, since it's clearly not battery related. I mean, everything battery-related works. It just won't start. But I don't want a fuel pump for Christmas!!!!!!

Wait and wait and wait and wait to hear from Gateway. Drive past the parking lot twice during the week and see the truck sitting innocently. Wave.

By Sunday, when we're all tired of driving around with three boys sitting shoulder to shoulder in the back seat of a sedan that seats four "comfortably," we have this conversation:

Owen: (leaning over as Tim takes a turn too sharply) Whooooaaaaaaaaa!

Mason: (shoving little brother) Get off me!

Owen: It was an accident!!!

Henry: (leaning dramatically over onto both brothers) Weeeeeeeeee, I'm having an accident too!

Owen and Mason: Hey!!!!!!! Stop!

Tim: (frustrated) If you don't stop, I'm gonna have an accident on all of y'all!

Henry: (after pause) Eeeewwww.

And that, America, is why we drive an SUV with three rows of seats.

Pick up truck Monday afternoon with the bizarre news that there is not a thing wrong with it. Merry Christmas, Gateway and Lund's Towing.

Book 'em

So I did something today that I've never done before. I got fingerprinted.
I hadn't been arrested, so this post probably won't be as exciting as you'd hoped. It was all part of the extremely rigorous hiring process in my local school system. I was hoping to spice up my life by working a few days a month as a substitute teacher at my kindergartner's school. So I dug up my old grad school transcript and my real Social Security card and attended a new hire orientation. All that still wasn't enough; I had to fork over a refundable $48 to get fingerprinted for a background check.
With all the headline-making, teacher-student scenarios inspired by that old Van Halen song, you'll be glad to know that our school system is doing its best to keep your kids from being locked in a classroom with a raving maniac.

I guess fingerprinting has come a long way since the days of Dragnet or even NYPD Blue. Of course, it's digital. I had to place my fingers just so on a touch pad that relayed a digital image to a computer screen and deemed them acceptable or not. Guess what? Mine were never acceptable. My fingerprints failed! The poor Official Fingerprint Lady had to try three times for each finger and thumb! It was a day of firsts for her, too.

"Well, I guess your ridges aren't very deep," she mused as she smashed and rolled my fingers on the screen in an attempt to capture an acceptable image. "I've never had one where I had to override all ten."

See, I AM special!

By the way, you can't go just anywhere to get fingerprinted. The school system's current list of approved locations included some random security agencies, but only one place in my county, about 20 miles from my house. It was at a UPS Store! I really wanted to go to the Guns and Leather location in Greenbrier, but that's two counties away.

After holding hands with the nice UPS lady for about 15 minutes, I finished and turned to head back home. She did have some parting words of advice for me, though.

"I guess if teaching doesn't work out, you'd be perfect for a life of crime!"

Don't even tempt me.

Read me read me read me

As I sent my husband an e-mail this morning, I did all the things I normally do to make it stand out in his inbox. At his work address, he gets approximately 117 e-mails per hour. I am not exaggerating. So I need to do all I can to make sure he sees my urgent messages. I usually type the subject in all caps, which in Internet-speak means yelling. I also don't ever include "Fw:" in the subject line because he has been known to skip over something if he thinks it's a frivolous chain letter I'm sending, which of course I would never do. As a last resort I hit the "High Priority" button.
Since he works approximately 117 hours a day and we have three kids at home who all want to talk to him at once when he does get here, Tim and I really don't talk TO each other that much. We rely on e-mail. I also recommend e-mail as a marriage-saving device as it allows you to "discuss" things without using a tone to which your partner may object.
The problem is that people are wearing out the "High Priority" button so that nearly every e-mail he gets has been designated a high priority. I mean, who's going to click on the "Low Priority" button? Why even send an e-mail if it's just a low priority?
Since everyone thinks their message is SO important, that leaves me just sitting here waiting around for him to tell me what he wants for dinner while he scrolls through and determines whether a work project really is falling apart or if he's just one of 32 people copied on a management manifesto.
Of course, I think all my e-mails should be of the highest priority to him. That's why I think there should be a "From the Wife" button similar to the high priority button. That way he'll know immediately what the next job is on his to-do list.

Before you pull out into traffic...

Thrice in the past week (yeah, I said "thrice")I have had close calls with other drivers in MY OWN neighborhood.
I've been driving along after dropping off Owen at school or on my way back from Kroger and I've had to pull WAY over to avoid an oncoming car because the other driver was still going through their cockpit checklist.
They were either turning on their phone, looking for sunglasses, or fixing their hair in the mirror. Two of the times, the driver didn't see me until I was on them and I honked.
I've heard a lot about how hazardous distracted drivers are and saw a statistic that 40% of "accidents" are caused by them. Based on my personal experience, it's getting worse.
It's tempting to think of driving as an automatic body function, but it's not. We all could use a return to awareness, especially those of us who've been driving for a few decades. We think we've got it down. I also think a lot of folks don't consider neighborhood streets to be worth the same level of caution as "city" streets. So they think nothing of hopping in the car and pulling out, using the "slow" drive to save time while they check phone messages, fish out their wallets, or check makeup.
Another danger zone for distracted drivers is near the fast-food drive-thru. I was making my way out of the Kroger parking lot this morning when a woman who had just left the Chik-fil-A in the same shopping center nearly T-boned me while searching the bag for her Chik'n Minis. I'm telling you, she never saw me. She almost had her head down in the bag as she drove past, and then she turned around to hand something to a kid in the back seat. Completely clueless.
All I'm saying is take a second to finish your business before you start driving again, people. It won't make you that much later if you pull over after you leave the drive-thru and use two hands, both eyes and your whole brain to get the food distributed, then you can use them for driving.
We need to be less concerned with saving time and more concerned with saving lives.

Oops

As a matter of fact, I DID write a new column for Brentwood Home Page this week. I just forgot to link to it here. So now you can read about what rejection feels like.

This week's Brentwood Home Page column

Find out why the best may be too good for me.

Agritourism Update

My tomato cages finally succumbed to the Better Boy tomatoes. You'd better not try to cage those Better Boys! What I'd like to know is when are the Better Boys ever going to go ahead and turn red?! We've all grown so tired of waiting that I've just been plucking them and frying the green ones.
Last summer was the first year I ever planted vegetables. I had three squash plants and two tomato plants of some variety that I can't recall. I only know they only produced about 12 maters total. And I got mad when the prickly squash plants poked my kids as they tried to "harvest" them, so I vowed never to plant squash again. Revenge is a dish best served with melted butter and cracker crumbs. The boys don't eat squash anyway!
Hence the two Better Boy tomato plants.
One thing that acted right in my garden this year was the one peony plant. I don't like to get too ambitious, you know. After hanging around three years, deigning to bloom once, this year the peony produced bloom after bloom, all spectacular. I'd love to take credit, but in truth I'd forgotten about it over the winter.
My other foray into botanic futility sits on the sill over my kitchen sink and reminds me of the "wonders" of nature countless times each day. The two flower pots are the size of shot glasses, and the Easter Bunny brought them. Way back in April. They are supposed to be strawberries, but they are the no-growingest plants I have ever encountered. The boys faithfully water them, but I don't see us pulling in a bushel of strawberries this season.
Those pots will make decent votive holders.