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.